


and how mighty it can be

by gryffsirius



Series: and how mighty it can be [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Marauders, first year, jily, mostly - Freeform, part one of a series, super slow burn though, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2019-10-07 23:28:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 38,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17375228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gryffsirius/pseuds/gryffsirius
Summary: “Hey.”“Hey yourself,” says one of the boys inside, the one who had been doing the insulting, and Remus huffs a little in amusement.“Do you have room for two more?”-The year is 1971, and four boys are about to go to Hogwarts for the first time. Part one of a ten part series focusing on the Marauders and their lives through their Hogwarts years and beyond.





	1. in which we begin

**Author's Note:**

> okay so this is part one of the mammoth story i’ve been working on for Literally at least half a year. i’m doing my best and i’ll be uploading a new chapter twice a week. if you’ve read any of my work in the past i hope you forgive my inconsistencies in writing schedules but im trying to be more consistent this time.
> 
> for this one, i’m basically trying to make this as canon as possible, just trying to fill in the gaps that jkr didn’t develop. if you’ve read thrice defied (one of my other pieces) the characters have the same development because i was working on both at the same time. this is going to be part one in a series going from 1971-1981. i really hope you enjoy!!
> 
> if you have any questions or comments, please let me know! kudos and comments are very much appreciated and they make me feel good :) you can also reach me on my twitter @gryffsirius, my instagram @emmakmarie, and my tumblr @siriusorioff. if you're interested in possibly supporting me and my work, my ko-fi is also @gryffsirius. i don't know how to include links in this description, but that's all my information. enjoy!! thanks for stopping by!!
> 
> this series is dedicated to jamie, who made all of this possible and encourages and supports me every day, even when i’m struggling. i love you 💖

The train is scarlet.

The train is scarlet, brilliantly so, and the clock is about to strike eleven, and Remus Lupin is late.

This is something that’s absolutely driving him insane, because he’s inherited his mother’s punctuality, and the thought of somehow missing the train is making him jittery.

He’s understandably full of anxiety, given that this is the first time that he’s leaving home, the first time that he’s going to be essentially on his own, the first time that he’s going to be surrounded by other kids his age. This is something that he’s wanted for as long as he can remember, but also something that he’s always thought was impossible.

So Remus, clearly, doesn’t want to fuck Hogwarts up. And for some insane reason, he thinks that being late to the first clearly defined moment of his formal education would be indicative of a really shitty Hogwarts career, and he isn’t about to let that happen.

His dad is pushing the luggage cart with his trunk on it and his mum is right next to him, but they aren’t really speaking, just jostling their way through the crowd so that they can get him on the train as soon as possible. Remus glances at his watch – two minutes.

“Shit,” he hears his dad say as the cart skids a little, coming to a halt right in front of the train.

“Lyall,” his mum admonishes, but there’s no heat behind the word, just an undertone of similar stress about the time limit.

His dad starts to put Remus' trunk in the baggage compartment of the train.

“Remus, go, you’re going to be late.”

“Yeah, okay,” Remus replies quickly, looking between his parents and giving them both a quick hug before hopping onto the train. “I’ll write.”

The whistle blows just as he grabs onto the railing next to the doorway, effectively drowning out his parents’ voices, but he knows that they’re telling him to be safe and talk to them often. Half a second later, the train starts to chug out of the station, moving still at a snail’s pace, but gaining speed with every passing moment.

“Wait!” Remus hears, and he looks out on the platform, seeing a boy running towards the train. He’s almost reached the step, he just needs an extra bit of help, so Remus holds out his hand and grabs the boy’s arm, pulling him onto the train just as the platform is ending.

“Holy fuck,” Remus says, and the boy, out of breath, sags against the interior of the train. He’s a bit shorter than Remus, with blond hair that looks as though it was meticulously combed by a parent earlier that morning and an expression of stress mingled with mild incredulity. Remus thinks that last emotion in particular might be from the sheer fact that he made it onto the train at all.

“Thanks,” the boy answers, and Remus lets a little laugh burst out of his mouth. The boy looks up at that, grinning, and adds, “I’m Peter. Pettigrew. It’s my first year.”

“Remus Lupin. Mine too, nice to meet you.”

They stand in the doorway for another few seconds, and Remus looks out of the still open door, watching the landscape roll away next to them. “Do you want to go find a compartment?” he asks, and Peter stands up from his leaning position.

“Yeah, that would probably be a good idea.”

They head into the train car, peering into compartments as though hoping to miraculously find an empty one, to no success. Remus is glad, however, for the fact that there seems to be a bit of camaraderie between him and Peter already, even though they aren’t speaking. He doesn’t feel like they need to, not yet.

Peter’s just saying, “I think we might need to either look in a different car or actually start talking to people, Remus,” when they come across one that looks to be filled with other students their age.

From inside the compartment, Remus hears, “No, if you’d rather be brawny than brainy –”

“Where’re you hoping to go, seeing as you’re neither?”

Remus snorts at that, even on the other side of the glass, and Peter, next to him, mutters, “Oh, shit,” under his breath.

Inside the compartment, a girl with red hair stands and begins to make her way out, followed by her friend, saying something about finding another compartment. They leave the door open behind them, and Remus looks at Peter, who shrugs.

“Well, they left two spaces,” Remus says, and steps up to the doorframe. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” says one of the boys inside, the one who had been doing the insulting, and Remus huffs a little in amusement.

“Do you have room for two more?”

“I mean, we do, but,” the boy sitting closer to the window says, scratching his nose and pushing his glasses into a bit of a lopsided position, “we don’t have a very good track record, clearly our last compartment mates didn’t work out.”

“Well, I just swung this one onto the train right before he was about to fall off the platform, I think we can handle it.” From behind him, Peter laughs. Remus looks back at him for a moment, before stepping inside anyway. “I’m Remus. This is Peter.”

“James,” the boy in the glasses says, turning in his seat to good-naturedly poke at the other boy with his foot.

“And I’m Sirius,” he says, swatting James’ foot away.

“Serious about what?” Peter asks, following Remus in and sitting next to him across from the other two boys.

Remus puts it together from the facial expression that follows that question and tries not to laugh.

“No, my name’s Sirius.”

“Yeah, most names aren’t jokes, mate, what is it? Mine’s Peter.”

Remus looks across the compartment and makes eye contact with James, who seems like he’s similarly trying not to absolutely fucking lose it.

“Sirius, it’s Sirius, S-I-R-I-U-S, like the star, my family’s pretentious.”

“Oh, fuck,” Peter says then, laughing. “I’m sorry, shit.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s hilarious,” Sirius deadpans, but smiles a little. “But I mean, hey, at least I don’t have the most difficult name, it’s just the one that also happens to sound exactly the same as a very common word in the English language.”

“How the hell does it get more difficult than _that_ ,” James asks, giving Sirius a sidelong look.

“I mean, my mother’s name is Walburga, so.”

“Well, I guess you could say that your family takes the subject of names very _seriously_ ,” Remus says after a pause, and Sirius just looks at him for a moment.

“That was well done, and I hate that I love it,” he replies, and Peter throws his hands in the air.

“That wasn’t well done at all, it was _terrible_.”

“Alright, yeah, it was terrible, but at least it didn’t take Remus three tries to figure out what my name was, so he’s currently my favorite, out of all of you.”

“It was two! Can you count?”

“Thanks,” Remus says mildly.

“You’re very welcome. You know, you should hold this position near and dear to your heart, it isn’t a title that’s lightly given out.”

“Uh, what about me?” James interjects in mock indignation, but the only response that Sirius has is to kick him lightly.

“Sirius, you’ve known me for less than ten minutes.”

“I’m an excellent judge of character.”

“I’m sure you are, it’s a very common trait in dogs.”

The trolley lady appears at that moment, and they all crowd around the door to get snacks. A few minutes later, James is throwing Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans into Peter’s mouth from across the compartment with shocking accuracy. He gives himself two extra points every time Peter has to spit one out from how disgusting it is.

Sirius reaches into James’ box of beans and chucks one at Remus' head, hitting him right above the left eyebrow. “What was with the dog thing?”

“Why did you throw that at my face?”

“I wanted to get your attention.”

“You could have just, I don’t know, said my name.”

Sirius responds by taking another bean, ignoring James’ soft _hey_ of protest, and throwing it again. Remus catches it this time and tosses it into Peter’s mouth.

“Peppermint,” Peter says, answering the questioning glances.

“Sirius is the Dog Star, I thought you’d know this.”

Sirius just shrugs in response. Part of Remus thinks that maybe he just doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t press the issue, he just continues, “It’s also the brightest star in the night sky.”

“Look at you, knowing lots about astronomy,” James comments, and Remus refrains from flipping him off and sticks his tongue out instead.

“Brightest star in the night sky? Well, then, it’s no wonder that Walburga decided to name me after it, I’m certainly the brightest star in her sad life.”

The train chugs through the countryside, the sky darkening as the afternoon crawls by. The boys trade tidbits about their lives, and Remus tries to make sure that he doesn’t say anything that could fuck it up. It could be fucked up so easily. Especially because sitting down in a compartment with literally the first three people that he’s met so far on his journey to Hogwarts and somehow feeling _this_ comfortable with them is something that he was not expecting at all.

Either way, he listens more than he shares, and learns about Peter’s dog and James’ parents and Sirius' brother, and before he knows it, they’re pulling into the station in Hogsmeade.


	2. in which everyone shares a hat, no one gets lice, and eleven year olds choose gangs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter two! here we go. trying to be consistent with an upload schedule is surprisingly less stressful than i was expecting it to be. thank you to everyone who's read, commented, and left kudos so far. it means the world to me. 
> 
> fun fact, the pov switches every chapter, so get ready for getting youth backstories of the best boys!! also if the part of mcgonagall's speech outside of the great hall seems familiar, it's because i was using the book as a reference to make it accurate, bc i pretty much assumed that she'd keep the same speech every year. anyway let's go. i hope you enjoy!! comments and kudos are much appreciated :)

The time period between getting on the Hogwarts Express and being Sorted is a bizarre one. To Sirius, it feels as though you’re meant to make friends on the train, but if you’re not in the same House as them, then it’s completely pointless.

He doesn’t want it to be completely pointless. He likes the friends that he’s made on the train. Unfortunately, he’s pretty sure that James at least will be going into Gryffindor, which means that if he doesn’t, he probably won’t be on good terms with him ever again.

They make their way from the train to the little boats, and when they round the bend, Hogwarts is illuminated in the night sky, the windows full of golden light and the moon a silver crescent hanging above the silhouetted castle, and Sirius feels his heart jump. He’s seen his fair share of beautiful homes and large buildings and castles owned by distant family members in his short life, but this – he’s never seen anything like this before.

He wonders if you can feel at home just by looking at a building for the first time.

Sirius is still nervous, sitting in the boat next to James, and his leg is starting to bounce involuntarily. James notices, looking over and glancing first at Sirius' jittery knee and then to his face. “You okay, mate?” he asks, and Sirius nods. He doesn’t quite trust himself to speak.

Peter, sitting in the front row of the boat, turns around. “Are you nervous about the Sorting?”

“No,” Sirius lies quickly. Remus snorts, without looking back. “Yes,” he amends.

Peter nods. “Me too. I really don’t know where I’m gonna be. Probably Hufflepuff.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being in Hufflepuff,” Remus replies easily, and Sirius notices that his gaze hasn’t wavered from the castle this whole time. They’re slowly but surely drawing closer to it, being guided by a bit of magical navigation and the gentle waves rippling across the surface of the lake, and Sirius' heart is beating faster the closer they get.

“Yeah, I heard their dorm is close to the kitchens.”

“That wasn’t exactly my point, James.”

But whatever point Remus had been trying to make is cut off as they reach the shore, their little boats crunching to a halt on rocky sand. They’re guided into the castle by an extremely large man named Hagrid who seems to be the assistant gamekeeper, and he tells them to wait in a massive stone entrance hall, departing with a wink. Sirius realizes that he and his friends are standing rather close to the front of the group of first years, and that makes him even more nervous, if that’s possible. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the only other people he really recognizes out of the crowd – the girl with the red hair from earlier and her friend, Sirius can’t remember his real name, just Snivellus – and he’s once again glad that he had people he liked sitting with him on the train.

Next to him, Peter is fidgeting with the sleeve of his carefully hemmed robes. James and Remus seem far too calm for the moment, and Sirius wishes that he could somehow embody that.

“What are we supposed to be waiting for?” Sirius asks after a moment, and Remus nudges him, pointing ahead to the double doors.

They’re creaking open, just enough so that a woman in deep red robes and a large pointy witch’s hat can step through them. They shut behind her, without being touched, and she comes and stands in front of the group of first years. Immediately, the whispering ceases and they all focus on her, and Sirius is instantly impressed with her ability to command the attention of a crowd.

“Welcome to Hogwarts,” she says in a clear voice. “My name is Professor McGonagall, and I am the Deputy Headmistress of the school. Now, as I’m sure you’re aware, in a few moments, you will pass through these doors and into the Great Hall, where you will be sorted into your Houses. The four Houses are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Whilst you are at Hogwarts, these Houses will be like your families, and you will be expected to behave in a manner that reflects well upon those families.”

“Oh, nothing new, then,” Sirius says under his breath.

“What?” asks James, and Sirius shakes his head.

“Nothing.”

“Positive achievements will earn you House points, and misbehavior will cost them,” Professor McGonagall continues, and Sirius starts paying attention again. “The House with the most points at the end of the school year will be awarded the House Cup. I trust that whichever house you are Sorted into, you will do your best to be a credit to its history and to your classmates.”

Sirius shifts uncomfortably.

Professor McGonagall takes an additional second to cast her eyes around at the group of nervous students waiting in front of her before continuing, “Now, in a few moments, the rest of the school will be seated and ready for us, and the Sorting Ceremony will commence. I do suggest that you smarten yourselves up while we wait.”

“Do I look okay?” Sirius hears Peter whisper.

“You’re great,” Remus replies in the same tone.

“You didn’t even look!”

“I remember what you looked like earlier, Peter.”

“Pete,” James interjects quickly, leaning around Sirius to look at Peter, “your tie, come here, it’s crooked.”

“Oh, thanks,” Peter replies, sounding relieved.

“Wow, it would’ve been a national disaster if Peter had entered the Great Hall with a crooked tie, wouldn’t it? Thank _god_ you got to it in time, James. Without your keen eyesight and powers of observation, we’d be lost.”

“Shut up, Sirius,” James answers easily, and Remus laughs.

There’s a knock on the other side of the wooden doors, one that Professor McGonagall was apparently waiting for, because upon hearing it, she clears her throat and the murmurs from the crowd quiet down. She reaches behind her, pushing the doors with a very light touch, and yet they swing open quite easily. Sirius wonders if it’s magic, or if they’re just oiled well. He wants to say it’s magic.

They follow Professor McGonagall through the massive archway, and Sirius looks up at the hall, realizing that it’s called Great for a reason, and he can feel the magic in the room thrumming through his veins. It’s like someone lit his pulse on fire, and he thinks only part of that is because of the anxiety that’s starting to kick up from having to go in front of the entire school and be Sorted in a few minutes. No, this is different, this is more, this is how Sirius felt the first time he was consciously aware of causing something magical to happen because he wanted it to, back when he was six years old and Regulus was crying about something and their parents weren’t there, so Sirius had thought about bubbles coming out from under the lampshade in the corner, and the bubbles had appeared.

The sheer amount of enchantment that he feels woven through the very stones of the castle convinces him that he was right earlier. When Professor McGonagall pushed open the doors, they were magic.

He doesn’t say any of this out loud, though. Sirius and his friends are fairly close to the front of the group of first years, with maybe five students in front of them. They’re passing through the exact middle of the room, with two House tables on either side of them – Sirius wants to say that they’re between Hufflepuff and Gryffindor right now. To the far left, out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees his cousin Narcissa. She seems to be trying to catch his attention, and he looks at her more fully; she offers him a tiny wave and a small smile of encouragement, and he’s suddenly extremely nervous again.

They reach the front of the Great Hall, and Sirius scans the table full of teachers in front of them, and then immediately fixes his gaze on the collar of the student in front of him to avoid making eye contact with anyone. The four of them are standing in a row, almost, and he’s between Remus and James, with Peter on Remus' other side, and Sirius hopes with all the optimism he can muster that he will at least have one of them in his House, whichever one he’s Sorted into.

He’d like to think that he’d be in Gryffindor. James is going to be in Gryffindor, Sirius can feel it in his bones. He’d like to think that he’d be with him, but he’s – he doesn’t want to say he’s _scared_ , but he is. He’s scared. He’s scared of what happens if he follows the tradition and slides on over to the Slytherin table after the Hat rests on his head for barely a second, but he’s more scared of what happens if he _doesn’t_.

The option of any of the other Houses was not something that was discussed in the Black household before Sirius left for school. His mother had told him to uphold the family honor, and she’d watched him get onto the train after tucking an unruly lock of hair behind his ear and sending him off, and there had been something that looked like the potential for pride in her eyes. Somehow Sirius thinks that that moment may have been the last time he’s ever going to see that expression on his mother’s face.

Sirius just wants to get the Sorting over with, but at the same time, he almost wants it to never happen.

He’s been lost in his own thoughts for so long that he completely missed the raggedy old Sorting Hat being brought out on its wooden stool, and only registers at the end of its frankly horribly written song that it’s been singing for the past minute or so.

“Great voice,” Remus mutters.

James laughs. “I mean, it doesn’t have vocal cords, what do you expect?”

“At least better lyrics, I mean, doesn’t it have a whole year to come up with a song?” Peter chimes in.

Remus turns a bit and catches sight of Sirius' expression. He doesn’t really know what he looks like at this moment, but judging from Remus' reaction, Sirius can only guess that he’s making a face pretty indicative of the kind of internal stress that he’s dealing with.

“Sirius, are you okay?” Remus asks softly, and Sirius opens his mouth to respond, but is cut off by Professor McGonagall unfurling a large roll of parchment and drawing the attention of the crowd. She mentions that she’ll be calling them alphabetically by last name, and the hand clenching around Sirius' stomach tightens its grip when he realizes that his last name starts with a goddamn B.

To make matters worse, Professor McGonagall calls three names before she is, all too quickly, saying, “Black, Sirius,” and Sirius can’t quite move his legs.

James nudges him. “Mate, she called your name, didn’t you hear her?”

“Uh, yeah, yeah, I did, I just –” Sirius shakes his head, clears his throat, squeezes between the people in front of him and gets to the stool, ignoring the light giggles he hears through the Great Hall.

He sits, propping his feet up on the little bar between the legs of the stool, and allows himself one anxious glance up at Professor McGonagall before she sets the hat on his head and it slips down over his eyes.

Sirius’ first stupid thought is that the hat is a lot bigger than he was expecting.

“Of course, I’m _bigger_ than you were expecting, boy, I belonged to a grown wizard, and despite your self-confidence, there’s no way your head is as big as that yet,” a gruff yet small voice says in his ear.

“Oh,” Sirius says out loud, and the Hat chuckles.

“No need to speak, I can hear what’s in your head just fine. Now, let’s see. Let’s see. I’ve seen many Blacks come through Hogwarts over the years, and where do they go? Always Slytherin, I’m sure that’s what you were told, too.”

Sirius' heart speeds up at that, and he can’t see anything but the inside of the hat, but he feels his fist clenching involuntarily as it rests on his bouncing knee.

“Ah, but you don’t _like_ that, do you? I suppose that makes you the _black_ sheep of the family, then.”

Sirius snorts.

“But what do I see? There’s an innate magical talent here, strong sense of camaraderie, penchant for breaking the rules… no, no, no, you don’t belong in Slytherin, I think you belong in –” and Sirius hears the Hat raise its voice and shout this part to the entire Hall, “GRYFFINDOR!”

Professor McGonagall lifts the hat off of Sirius' head and he blinks at the sudden light, and in the half a second it takes him to stand up off of the stool he notices that there was a delay before the school population started clapping.

He doesn’t dare to look over at the Slytherin table, just makes a beeline for the open end of the Gryffindor table, reserved for the first years, glancing over at his friends as they cheer for him, still waiting to be Sorted.

The Ceremony progresses. It’s surprisingly quick, Sirius thinks, the Hat making relatively fast decisions with everyone that it comes into contact with this evening. Before long, the red-headed girl from the train, who Sirius now knows as “Evans, Lily”, is also Sorted into Gryffindor, and Sirius offers her the seat next to him.

She almost sits, but then seems to remember their conversation earlier, and moves to the other side of the table.

Sirius doesn’t want to say that it stings, but it does. After all, there’s no _real_ guarantee that James will be with him, and he really doesn’t know about Remus and Peter. They could all be separated. Sirius thinks it just would have been nice to start by sitting next to someone who was already in their House.

Sirius' jitters about being completely alone are short-lived, for as the L’s conclude, Remus sits under the Hat for a full minute before it screams, “GRYFFINDOR!” and he hops down the steps, grinning.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he says as he sits down next to Sirius.

“I know, what are the odds?”

“One in four, I believe,” Remus replies, and Sirius laughs. Remus reaches across the table to Lily Evans, holding out his right hand. “Hi, I’m Remus.”

“Lily Evans,” she answers, shaking his hand with a little smile on her face. “Nice to meet you.”

“This is Sirius,” Remus says unnecessarily, and Sirius grins at Lily cheekily from across the table.

“We’ve met,” she says shortly, and directs her attention back to the front of the Hall.

“Shit, what did you do?” Remus asks under his breath, watching the next few people get Sorted. They’re joined by three in a row, “MacDonald, Mary”, “McKinnon, Marlene”, and “Meadowes, Dorcas”.

“Oh, I insulted her friend just before you and Pete joined us in the compartment. You should’ve been there, it was brilliant.”

“I think I heard the tail end of it.”

“Then you know how brilliant it was.”

“It wasn’t terrible.”

“Oh, shhh, Pete’s up.”

Peter mounts the steps to go sit on the stool, looking particularly pale and shaky. He glances over in the direction of the Gryffindor table, and Sirius gives him two thumbs-up. Peter nods and the hat slips over his eyes.

It takes around thirty seconds, but the Hat shouts, “GRYFFINDOR!” and Peter joins them, squeezing in next to Remus with a relieved grin on his face.

“Ooh, I was nervous,” he says as he sits, and Sirius reaches in front of Remus to give Peter a high five. “Did I look nervous?”

“You looked like you were about to fall over, mate.”

“Good thing there was a stool, then. Hi,” Peter says, beginning to introduce himself to the rest of the first years at their table.

There’s exactly one person before it’s James’ turn, and Sirius knocks on the table quickly to get his friends’ attention as the last of their little group is called. Professor McGonagall says, “Potter, James,” and Sirius lets out a whoop. His cheer is followed by a ripple of giggles through the room and a stern look from Professor McGonagall, but he doesn’t care.

Almost exactly the same as earlier, James is looking remarkably calm. He sits on the stool and waves at his friends, and the hat barely touches his head before yelling, “GRYFFINDOR!” and James is bounding down the steps towards them.

“Nicely done, James,” Sirius says, a bit louder than he normally would, leaning around Remus and Peter so he can look at James when he says it.

“What did I tell you on the train? I knew I’d be here. I’m just glad _you’re_ here, mate.”

“Yeah, me too,” Sirius replies.

The rest of the Sorting happens rather quickly. The only other name that Sirius takes note of is “Snape, Severus”, just because he recognizes him as Lily Evans’ wanker friend from the train. She seems hopeful that he’ll join them, but Sirius is unsurprised when he’s Sorted into Slytherin.

Eventually, Professor McGonagall reaches the end of her parchment, rolling it up back into a tight tube and heading back to her seat at the High Table as Professor Dumbledore stands and raises his hands. The room had already been fairly quiet, but now it falls silent, waiting for the impending speech.

Peter’s stomach growls just then, and James has to clap a hand over his mouth to stop himself from laughing.

“Shut up, I’m hungry,” Peter hisses.

“Are you talking to your stomach or to us?” Remus asks, and Peter shoves him lightly.

Dumbledore looks around the room, as if surveying all of them before he begins to speak. The candlelight seems to make his beard look shiner than Sirius thought was possible. The Chocolate Frog cards really don’t do him justice, he decides.

“There are many perfect moments for long-winded and eloquent speeches,” Dumbledore begins, “but this is not one of those times. Enjoy the feast!” He waves his hands, and the previously empty golden platters in front of them fill with food.

The feast is incredible, and Sirius and his friends stuff themselves as full as they possibly can before the food disappears again, presumably back to the kitchens from whence it came. Sirius, as full as he is, is almost sorry to see it go.

Dumbledore makes some sort of speech about the dangers of wandering around alone on school grounds, and the dark times that the wizarding community is facing lately, and about how Hogwarts is a family, and that they should treat each other as such. Sirius doesn’t pay much attention. He’s propped his head up on his hand and is leaning against the table, far too distracted by the little Golden Snitch on the second hand of James’ watch, ticking around and around the edge of the face, to truly focus. He just wants to go to bed.

Ultimately, Dumbledore finishes his speech, with a rousing, “Off to bed! School tomorrow!” and the student body stands as one, pushing back the benches and clambering over them to head to their dormitories. It’s at this moment that Sirius realizes that he and the rest of the first years have absolutely no idea where they’re supposed to go. He thinks maybe there’s supposed to be someone directing them.

“Is there supposed to be a –” Remus begins, but is cut off as a rather harried looking fifth year student wearing a prefect badge rushes over to them and beckons them towards the doors.

She tells them all about the history of the castle and how to get to their dormitories from the Great Hall and to _watch out for the trick step in that staircase, Pettigrew, you don’t want to get stuck_ , and that all of their things from the train have already been loaded in their new rooms during the feast.

“Efficient,” Sirius comments, to no one in particular, as they climb a stone staircase.

They reach the entrance to Gryffindor Tower, the prefect guiding them opening the door by saying, “Indomitability,” after introducing them to the Fat Lady. Within five minutes, the eight of them are splitting off into girls and boys, heading to their separate dorms, and Sirius stands in front of the door to their new room, somehow the first in line to open it.

“Here goes,” he says, and pushes it open.

It doesn’t really make sense that there’s only one entrance to the boys’ dormitory, Sirius thinks, how does it know which room you’re trying to get into? Magic, he’d say, but he doesn’t have the energy to try and figure out the enchantment right now. All he knows is that the four of them are spilling into their new room together, for the first time ever, and Sirius can feel deep in his chest that this is the beginning of a new chapter of his life. Not just because he’ll be living here, with these boys, for the next seven years, but because he truly feels like it’s the dawn of a new era. The room is cozy and they each have four-poster beds and the whole room is decorated in the Gryffindor colors, and Sirius finds his trunk by the bed opposite the window, on the very end.

Remus flops down on the bed next to his. James and Peter settle at the next two beds, respectively, and Sirius takes a look around before leaning against one of the posts of his own bed.

James is sitting cross-legged atop his blankets, and he stretches before saying, “Well, lads, it’s all happening now, isn’t it?”

“That was incredibly eloquent.”

“Shut up, Remus.”

They don’t talk much for the rest of the evening, just light chatter before changing into their pajamas and getting into bed. Peter leaves the window open, the light from the crescent moon streaming in and leaving shadows on the floor, and Sirius lets himself think, just this once, that maybe everything can be exactly right. He could get used to this feeling. He thinks maybe he will, with friends like these around.


	3. in which peter can do a startlingly good walburga black impression

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 3!! thank you to everyone who has been following along and supporting this story so far :) it means the world to me. comments and kudos are very much appreciated and really motivate me to keep going. ily all!!!
> 
> twitter - gryffsirius  
> instagram - emmakmarie  
> tumblr - siriusorioff  
> ko-fi - gryffsirius

Peter isn’t really sure what he expected out of his first week at Hogwarts, but when he imagined it before getting here, he didn’t think it would involve nearly as much activity as it does.

Sure, he knew that there would be classes and friends and constant magic, but he had no idea that he was expected to be fully equipped to deal with _drama_.

Perhaps drama is too strong of a word. Either way, they’ve been at school for a week and a half, and James and Sirius are already having problems with Lily Evans and her prick Slytherin friend, Remus has been dropping hints that he’s going away next weekend for a visit with his parents (Peter thinks that he said his mum was sick?), and Peter’s drowning in so much homework that his head is spinning.

Despite all of this, despite everything that’s happening, Peter wouldn’t trade the whirlwind of activity for anything in the world. He just fits in so _easily_ with his friends, from the first moment that he got on the train, and he feels welcome and wanted and like this is the first place that he truly belongs. It’s not as though Peter has anything against the farm in Yorkshire, but it’s not _him_ , not really.

He thinks he feels more like himself at Hogwarts than he’s ever felt back at home.

Peter’s at breakfast on the second Friday that they’ve spent at school, eating a piece of toast while trying to read up on the transformation formula, and he’s focused enough on the book in front of him that he actually doesn’t notice when Sirius sits down with a huff next to him.

“What’s your issue?” he hears James say from across the table.

“I – what? Jamie, I’m insulted that you even have to _ask_ ,” Sirius replies, somewhat dramatically for this early in the morning.

Remus snorts. “Clearly he’s going to make this into a big deal.”

“Was there ever any doubt of that?” Peter adds, not looking up from his book. Sirius shoves him lightly before speaking again.

“My _issue_ , James, is that the three of you left without me this morning. You _know_ I have a faulty circadian rhythm, how else am I supposed to wake up on time unless you help me?”

Peter looks up. “I dunno, Sirius, maybe buy an alarm clock?”

“Alarm clocks are for people who don’t have friends.”

“Oh, so it should be perfect for you,” Remus says dryly. Sirius frowns and moves in a way that seems to indicate that he’s aiming a kick at Remus under the table.

“Ow!” James says sharply. “That was my knee.”

“Sorry,” Sirius replies, grimacing. “That was clearly meant for Remus.”

“Thanks for taking one for the team, JP,” Remus says to James, taking a sip of his tea.

“I’ll get you back for that, Sirius,” James says mildly, just as there’s a flapping of wings from above, indicating that the rush of owl post is being delivered for the day.

A large and stately eagle owl swoops over Peter’s head at an uncomfortably close range, clipping him on the head with the knuckle of its talon as it drops a large letter bound with a wax seal on Sirius' plate. It doesn’t stop, it just wheels around at the end of the Hall and makes its way outside once again.

“Looks like that letter might do it for you, James,” Peter says softly, and all four of them lean in to get a closer look at it. As Sirius picks it up, Peter might be imagining it, but he thinks his hands are shaking a little bit.

“Is that from your parents?” James asks, voice hushed.

None of them at this point have really pressed Sirius on how he feels about his family – all they know is that there isn’t a lot of warmth between him and his parents. Peter, James and Remus have all been pretty comfortable trading stories and sharing about their various upbringings, but at this point, Peter knows next to nothing about Sirius' relationship with his parents. However, judging from his expression when the letter landed in front of him, this doesn’t look like it could mean anything good.

“Yeah,” Sirius answers, and his voice sounds a little like someone ran a comb through it – empty in a few spots and like it needs to be shaken out. He clears his throat. “Yeah, that’s the Black family crest, they pulled out all the stops. And – look at that,” he flips the letter over, “that’s my mother’s handwriting, she wouldn’t be writing this early unless I’d done something horribly wrong.”

“What the hell would you have done wrong, we would’ve known if something had happened,” Remus says, his tone a little indignant.

“I know, I just – I didn’t actually do anything wrong, I’m just. Sitting at the wrong table,” Sirius tries to explain, and Peter thinks back to his friend’s Sorting and the delay in applause when he was Sorted into Gryffindor.

“Oh,” he says in response, eloquently.

“Are you gonna open it?” James asks, and Sirius looks up at him.

“I mean…” Sirius looks as though he’s trying to find any excuse to not actually read what his mother has to say. “Do I have to?”

“Do you want me to read it for you?” Peter says, half-jokingly, and Sirius raises his eyebrows.

“Actually… yeah, that would be nice, I think.” He hands Peter the letter, and Peter sets down his toast before taking it and breaking the wax seal.

“Uh, sure, mate. I guess.” The letter folds open in one piece of parchment, without an envelope. Peter clears his throat and shakes the letter out dramatically before beginning to read it, taking note of the way it makes his friends laugh a little.

“Okay, it says – in impeccable penmanship by the way –”

“That’s Walburga,” Sirius interjects.

“Shut up and let me read it, don’t you want to know what it says? It says _Dear son_. That’s a good start. _Dear son, your father and I received correspondence from your aunt which indicates that, according to your cousin Narcissa_ – what a name, does everyone in your family have names like that? I’m getting off topic, sorry – _your cousin Narcissa, you have been Sorted into Gryffindor House._ ”

“All facts so far,” Remus says as Peter pauses.

Sirius smiles a little. “Keep going.”

Peter frowns slightly as he reads the next sentence, but forces himself to say it without pausing, just so that he can get all of the words out. “ _Although this is not the result that we were expecting would come of your Sorting, I trust that you will correct this mistake to the best of your ability, if not in campaigning to be transferred immediately to Slytherin House, then in ensuring that you uphold the family name and make us proud._ Jesus,” Peter adds on the end as he finishes reading the sentence.

“Shit,” James says, eyes fixed on Sirius, who’s picking at a stray cuticle on his thumb. “Does she mean that?”

“My mother means every word that comes out of her mouth,” Sirius replies, with a nonchalance that could pass as genuine, if not for the speed at which he’s speaking. “Is that all, Pete?”

“No, there’s - there's a little bit left,” Peter says, then looks at the letter again. “ _I’ve sent a letter to the Headmaster explaining the situation, and I trust that you will have a meeting with him within the week_ – holy fuck, Sirius, this is extreme – _but in the meantime, your cousin Narcissa is going to be looking in on you occasionally. I await your owl_ , and then it’s just signed _Mother_.”

Sirius doesn’t react right away to the end of the letter, just takes a sip of his pumpkin juice and raises his eyebrows at the continued stares from his friends. “What?”

“Just – it was a little harsh to hear, and it wasn’t even directed at me, how do _you_ feel about it?” James asks, leaning in a little as though to get a closer look at Sirius.

Sirius leans back. “Why are you so close to my face?”

“Because I love you and I cherish you and I want to be near you forever,” James replies, in a tone that almost seems completely sincere, if not for the little laugh bubbling out of his mouth on the last word.

“Piss off,” Sirius says, but he’s laughing a little. The bell rings just then, and Peter hands the letter back to Sirius, who folds it a bit more carefully than expected and tucks it in his pocket.

Sirius seems to notice his friends both looking at him and trying to look as though they aren’t looking at him. “What lesson do we have?” he asks. Peter can tell that he’s trying to give off a vibe of nonchalance. It isn’t working.

After a brief pause, Remus says, “You're an idiot. I can’t believe you don’t know our timetable yet.”

Sirius throws his hands in the air dramatically, then reaches down and grabs his bag from where it was sitting on the floor next to the bench. “We’ve only been in school for two _weeks,_ sorry I don’t have extreme powers of memorization!”

“We have Transfiguration,” James supplies helpfully, and the four of them begin to walk.

“Ah, shit, I don’t know the transformation formula well enough yet,” Peter says absently, pulling his book out of his bag again and flipping to the right page to keep reading as they walk. Sirius, slightly in front of him, grabs Peter’s hand and places it on his shoulder before continuing to walk so that they’re moving in a kind of train-like line. “What was that for?”

“So you don’t run into anything,” Sirius replies easily, and Peter snorts.

“Thanks, weirdo.” His statement is immediately followed by swift turn from Sirius and a hard poke in the ribs, but Peter thinks it’s worth it.

They make it to Transfiguration before the second bell rings, and it’s altogether a rather uneventful class, in Peter’s opinion. Surprisingly, he manages to remember the transformation formula when Professor McGonagall asks him about it when his hand isn’t even up, earning five points for Gryffindor and a high five under the table from Remus.

On Fridays, Transfiguration is followed by their weekly flying lesson, which Peter hates and Remus has somehow managed to get excused from, so he goes to the library for an hour and tells them that he’ll meet them at Defense Against the Dark Arts later. James and Sirius are, as usual, effortlessly _good_ at everything, including flying, and part of Peter is jealous at that, but he puts it aside. It’s not as though flying is an important life skill, he’s sure that he won’t really use it. He’s not even that into Quidditch.

The flying lesson continues their incredibly routine day, considering that only two kids fell off their brooms from about three feet above the ground, not even getting injured. By the end of it, they’re able to circle the courtyard at about ten feet, which is far more than Peter’s comfortable with, and they land and rush off to their break before Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Remus meets them in front of the classroom approximately thirty seconds before class is supposed to start, looking like he just ran the length of the castle in two minutes.

“Mate, what’s with the sweating?” James asks, flicking a piece of hair off of Remus' forehead. Remus scowls at him.

“I just _ran_ here, what did you think? I was late.”

“You’re always late,” Sirius says. He’s standing on one foot and sort of hopping around as though that’ll alleviate his boredom, and Remus narrows his eyes at him. As though on an impulse, he sticks out his right foot and moves it in a rapid sweeping motion, knocking Sirius off balance and causing him to stumble backwards on his cloak and fall hard in front of the classroom door.

“Have a nice trip, Black?” Snape’s voice says suddenly, snidely, unexpectedly. Peter turns and sees him walking towards the classroom door, now open, with a knot of Slytherins.

Sirius seems to be struggling to find something clever to say, his cheeks red, finally settling on the eloquent and cutting, “Shut up.”

“Ooooh, great comeback,” Snape sneers, meeting Lily Evans at the door and walking in with her. Sirius flips Snape off just as the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, Professor Bratum, appears in the doorway.

“Mr. Black, that kind of gestured profanity is not permitted in my classroom, kindly get ahold of yourself and your manners and come inside,” Bratum says in a lofty voice. Peter narrows his eyes but says nothing. Bratum is most likely in his late thirties, with a receding hairline and a snooty voice. The boys had all taken an instant dislike to him during their first lesson, when he had droned on for about half an hour on the importance of defensive tactics and how they needed to be aware of the danger out in the world at the moment. As if they didn’t already know. Everyone knew what was happening right now, he didn’t need to treat them like they were children.

“We _are_ children,” Remus had said, unconcerned. James had looked deeply insulted.

“That doesn’t mean he has to be so _fucking_ condescending!” he’d replied hotly, before becoming distracted by Sirius drumming with a fork and his wand on the table. “What song is that?” James had asked, and that had been the end of the discussion.

Those feelings about Bratum immediately resurface with the way he’s speaking to Sirius at this moment, and Peter thinks that possibly there’s something more than just a superiority complex going on with this man. Then again, the four of them might be biased because they also want him to fuck off and stop setting them large essays two weeks into school. (That doesn’t make sense to Peter, they’ve barely learned anything to write essays about, but that’s beside the point.)

To Bratum’s reprimand, Sirius replies sharply, “We aren’t _in_ your classroom, and I don’t see you telling Snape off for being a prick or Remus for tripping me over.”

“Hey,” Remus replies reproachfully.

“Sorry,” Sirius mutters as he stands.

Bratum’s eyes are narrowed when Sirius meets his eyes again. “Speaking like that to one of your teachers will _not_ be tolerated, young man. Say goodbye to your Friday night, I will see you back here tonight for detention.” Without another word, Bratum turns on his heel and sweeps back into the classroom.

“What a dickhead,” James comments under his breath as they follow suit and take the remaining seats at the back of the classroom.

“I can’t even see from back here,” Remus says.

“Thanks a lot for _defending_ me,” Sirius hisses. “It would’ve been nice to be backed up by my friends but I guess that’s not how it works.”

Peter snorts. “What, did you expect us to talk shit to the teacher? Right after he gave you detention? Uh, I’m not about to get a letter sent home to my mums yet.”

“No, I just –” Sirius is cut off as Bratum clears his throat obnoxiously at the front of the class and begins the lesson, forcing the four of them into silence for the next hour.


	4. in which no one remembers about the trick step

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a v v v short update, but i like it. it's mostly setting up for future events, so it's necessary but v small. thank you always to everyone who leaves kudos and comments and to everyone following along with the story :') it means the world to me

“Well, that class sucked,” James announces loudly as they exit the classroom. “I swear, Bratum didn’t stop talking for the entire hour that we were in there.”

“That’s… his job, JP, he was giving a lecture,” Remus says.

“Yeah, but he didn’t have to be so _annoying_ about it,” James replies.

Sirius still looks sulky about his detention. “You okay, mate?” Peter asks him, leaning around James to get Sirius' attention. Sirius shrugs.

“It’s – I don’t know, it’s been a day.” The four of them make their way towards the Great Hall, trailing slightly behind the Gryffindor girls in their year and farther behind the Slytherins that they had been also sharing the class with.

“Bratum shouldn’t’ve given you that detention, Sirius, you didn’t do anything wrong,” James says while hopping down a staircase, skipping a trick step after just barely remembering it in time. Behind him, Remus gets his toe stuck in it and immediately trips, falling forward into James and, while trying to grab onto Peter for balance, knocking all of them down. Sirius almost escapes unscathed, but Remus' hand gets caught on the hem of his robes as the three of them are falling and Sirius is moving out of range, and in that step, he manages to only make it a foot away before falling as well.

Sirius, lying facedown on the stone floor, replies to James, saying, “I agree,” as though nothing had happened.

James tries to lift himself up as much as he can, which is difficult considering he has both Peter and Remus on top of him and hears a shout of laughter from across the hall as he does. The Gryffindor girls are standing on the other side of the hall, and the laughter is coming from Marlene McKinnon, who has the audacity to point and cackle at them like some sort of witch from a Muggle children’s cartoon.

“Fuck off, McKinnon!” Peter yells, halfway sandwiched between James and Remus. James wedges his arms out from under all the bodies on top of him and manages to push himself up on his elbows.

“Ow,” he hears Remus say, very close by his ear.

“Are you okay?”

“I think so? My foot’s still stuck, I think.”

James looks up again to see Marlene half-jogging over to them, still laughing, pulling Dorcas Meadowes and Mary MacDonald along with her. He notices Lily Evans trailing along behind them, a bit halfheartedly, and he wants to pinch himself from how he feels a little jolt in his stomach when he sees her.

(James does _not_ like Lily Evans. He does _not_. He just thinks she has nice eyes and is really smart and sometimes she’s mean but that doesn’t matter much to him.)

“Do you need a hand?” Dorcas asks when they reach the boys, extending one to Sirius, who’s the furthest out.

“Thanks,” Sirius says, glaring a little at Marlene, who still hasn’t stopped laughing. He reaches and pulls Peter and Remus off of James, so that James can sit up himself and get to his feet.

Remus is frowning at his shoe. “I think I twisted my ankle.”

There’s a slight pause then, when all eight of them just kind of look at each other. To be fair, up until this point most of their interactions have been limited to the classroom. James doesn’t really know why, just that it happened like that. Maybe because the boys had all met on the train and had been sharing a room for two weeks now, yet they barely saw the girls aside from classes.

James doesn’t want to admit that he’s a little intimidated by Lily Evans and they way she refuses to be nice to him – she’s nice to Remus and Peter, but never to him and Sirius – but he thinks that this might be a large factor in how their two groups interact with each other.

“Is your ankle okay?” Mary asks Remus, and he scrunches up his eyebrows, reaching out and putting a hand on James’ shoulder for balance as he lifts his foot and squints at it.

“I think so? It should be. I can go talk to Madam Pomfrey about it if it isn’t.”

“Who?” Peter asks.

“Madam… Pomfrey, you know, she runs the hospital wing. She’s our resident Healer?”

Lily laughs a little. “I think you’re the only one who actually knows this.”

“Look, you don’t have to make fun of me for actually knowing the names of the staff here. We live in the same building as them, you’d think that we would be able to make some effort and learn who they are.”

“What’s the name of the assistant gamekeeper?” Sirius asks quickly as they all start walking again.

“Are you quizzing me?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“Uh,” Remus says, looking up at the ceiling for a minute. “Hagrid. He’s nice. Doesn’t anyone remember, he helped Ogg take us to the boats and into the castle when we got off the train.”

“Who the fuck is Ogg?”

“The _gamekeeper_ , I just –”

The eight of them end up sitting together at lunch that day, and it’s actually far nicer than James was expecting. He doesn’t know what he thought was going to happen when he went into it, he thinks that maybe he thought that they couldn’t actually all get along without some sort of fight happening halfway through. James thinks he’d like to be friends with the girls, and this surprising break in slight animosity between them is a bit encouraging to him.

This is interrupted when halfway through lunch, the subject of Quidditch gets brought up.

“They’d never let you on the team, though,” Marlene says, shaking her head. “We’re _first years_ , no one gives a shit about us.”

“Yeah, but they haven’t seen me fly,” James replies. He knows he’s being unnecessarily smug about it, but he doesn’t particularly care. “I’m great, I played Chaser for my team at home.”

Sirius looks at him a little incredulously. “You had a team at home? Where the fuck did you live?”

James shrugs. “Godric’s Hollow.”

“How did the Muggles not see that? Hogsmeade’s the only purely wizarding village in the UK, how did you not get caught?”

“I dunno, Dorcas, magic maybe? My dad helped organize everything but it’s not like he told me all the intimate details.”

“They’re not gonna let you on the team,” Lily says definitively from across the table. “I know nothing about Quidditch and I’m one _thousand_ percent sure of that.”

James narrows his eyes a little. “You know what, Evans, I’ll take that bet. Sirius and I will try out for the Gryffindor team –”

Sirius chokes on his pumpkin juice. “We’ll _what_?” he wheezes, and Peter whacks him on the back.

Continuing his sentence like nothing had happened, James says, “– and when we, or at least I, make it, you have to be nice to me for two whole weeks.”

Lily raises her eyebrows. “That’s all you’re betting?”

“Yeah, seems like a worthy cause to me.”

She huffs a light laugh. “Okay, well when you _don’t_ make the team, you have to compose a new original song every time you see Dumbledore for the following eight days, and you owe me a Galleon for every shot you miss or that gets blocked.”

“Tough decision, JP.”

“Don’t try to influence my decisions, Pete,” James says quickly, leaning across the table and extending his hand to shake Lily’s. “You’re on.”

After the handshake, Lily laughs. “This is going to be the easiest money I’ve ever made.”


	5. in which sirius officially becomes a delinquent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we're back! a longer chapter than monday's for sure. i hope you enjoy, this one does give a bit of insight into sirius' family and how i think their dynamic is at this point. btw i'm a firm believer that walburga and orion did in fact love him a Lot, they just got increasingly disappointed with him and ended up snapping at one point and sirius never forgave them for it (with good reason... you'll see ;) fifth year)
> 
> anyway, please enjoy!!  
> twitter - gryffsirius  
> tumblr - siriusorioff  
> instagram - emmakmarie  
> ko-fi - gryffsirius

It’s almost seven in the evening that night when Peter throws a Chocolate Frog card at Sirius from across the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, hitting him sharply on the eyebrow.

“Ow! Pete, what was that for?”

Peter gestures wildly, waving his hands in the air as though he expects Sirius to know exactly what he meant by his actions. “You idiot, you have a detention with Bratum in like, ten minutes.”

“Wait, really?” Sirius grabs James’ wrist to look at his watch.

“What the hell, Sirius, I was using that,” James complains, but doesn’t sound too upset, more like he was mildly inconvenienced.

“You’re on your third plate, I think you’ll be fine,” Sirius replies absentmindedly. “Shit, Pete’s right, I’m gonna be late if I don’t go now.”

“Where do you even put it all?” Remus asks James, who wiggles his fingers in a vaguely spooky motion before filling his mouth with another forkful of pasta.

“I gotta go,” Sirius says unnecessarily, standing. “Save me a seat by the fire when I get back.”

“How long do detentions even last?” Remus calls after him as he begins to make his way out of the Great Hall.

“I dunno, how much trouble am I in for talking back to the teacher?”

“I guess we’ll see!” They’re practically shouting at this point, and as Sirius has reached the door, he gives his friends one last wave before heading out into the corridor.

Sirius' walk to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom is almost eerily quiet, his footsteps echoing through the stone halls and reminding him that this is the first time that he’s had to be alone since coming to Hogwarts. He doesn’t like it. It reminds him too much of being at home.

Not that there’s anything wrong with home. He doesn’t mind it. Not too much. It’s just quiet. No one really talks to each other. Hogwarts is loud and full of life and chattering voices and interesting smells and the way being here makes him feel is the way his heart has felt for as long as he can remember. It’s a stark contrast to before. Sirius thinks that if he hadn’t ever come here, he wouldn’t have known that he needed this, that he would find a home away from home so easily. He wouldn’t have known what he was missing. But the fact that there’s a sick feeling coiling in his stomach now that the halls are cold and quiet, and he’s started thinking about long visits to distant relatives in dark manors tells him that he thinks maybe he doesn’t quite belong in a place like that.

Sirius wonders, offhandedly, how Regulus is doing.

His feet take him to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom with far less hesitation than he was hoping for, and at two minutes before seven o’clock, he knocks on the door.

Bratum’s voice calls, “Come in,” from the other side of the door, and Sirius pushes it open, lingering for a bit by the entrance to the classroom instead of making his way towards the desk.

“You’re early, Mr. Black. Well, at least you have punctuality in your favor, even if your lack of respect for authority figures seems to be dominating your more positive traits.” Sirius manages to stay silent, shutting the door behind him. Bratum looks up at the sound of the door clicking into place in the frame. “Come in, take a seat in the front row.”

Sirius still doesn’t say anything, sitting down in the front row as far from the desk as he can manage. It isn’t a great distance, but it still means that Bratum has to turn his head at an inconvenient angle to actually make eye contact with him, which Sirius considers a win.

“Do you have a quill and parchment with you?” Sirius nods. “Good. This was a fairly mild incident, so I believe that we’ll have a fairly mild punishment. Does that seem fair to you?”

Sirius gets the feeling that Bratum doesn’t really care about his opinion. He’s proven right when Bratum doesn’t wait for him to even react, just steamrollering forward and saying, “You’re going to be doing lines. I want you to write _I will show my teachers proper respect_.”

“How many times?”

Bratum’s mouth tightens a little at Sirius' deliberate omission of the word _sir_ , but he doesn’t acknowledge it, just replies, “Until the hour is up.”

Sirius glances at the clock. It’s 7:03. He wants to die.

Bratum gives Sirius a miraculous ten minutes of silence, broken only by the sounds of their quills scratching and Bratum’s occasional humming of reaction as he reads the papers that he’s grading. All too soon, however, he’s setting aside his parchments and clearing his throat, indicating that he wants Sirius to pay attention to him.

“Mr. Black, I know you know _why_ you’re here, but are you aware of why I decided that your actions were delinquent enough to warrant a detention?”

Sirius pauses his writing. He can’t think and write and pay attention to what someone’s saying if he’s expected to do all of that at the same time, so he stops his hand in the middle of the word _show_ and looks up. “I don’t know. I was _incredibly_ rude. Sir.”

Bratum chuckles slightly at that, but his eyes are cold. “I decided that it was worthy to pull you into a detention because I think that, with a little supervision and discipline, you could be a great wizard.” He seems to notice that Sirius has stopped writing. “Keep working.”

Sirius directs his attention back to the parchment.

Bratum’s speech continues in much of the same manner for the rest of the hour, rambling vaguely about how Sirius could be much more skilled if he only put in the effort ( _I’m in first year_ , Sirius thinks, but doesn’t say anything) and about how generations of witches and wizards before him have struggled with not knowing which path they were meant to follow, but with the right guidance, they were able to discover their destinies.

What Sirius is gathering from this is that Bratum thinks he’s one of the greatest teachers of all time, and has far more faith in his own abilities than he should.

Sirius is about to reach the end of his parchment roll and the clock is forty-five seconds away from striking eight when Bratum casually says, “…and after all, you want your parents to be proud of you. I know how important your future is to them.”

“What?” Sirius asks, looking up, in a sharper tone than he really should have used.

Bratum looks at him in mild confusion. “Weren’t you listening, Mr. Black? I told you that I’m on good terms with your parents, I had mentioned to them before the start of the school year that I would be taking this position and they asked me to keep an eye on you.”

Sirius narrows his eyes almost imperceptibly. He doesn’t know how legitimate that is. Bratum isn’t a part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight and his mother doesn’t often associate with anyone outside of it, and unless Bratum’s previous job had been high up in the authority positions of the Ministry (which Sirius doubts), it’s unlikely that his father would either.

Still, there’s something about the casual way that Bratum has dropped Sirius' parents into his lecture that makes him uneasy. Not because of his parents, but because of the implications.

Just as Sirius is about to ask something, he doesn’t know what yet, just something to help him figure out the entire swirl of thoughts that’s developed in his brain since Bratum’s nonchalant mention, the clock on the wall chimes and Bratum looks around at it suddenly.

“Eight o’clock, Mr. Black. I hope you’ve learned something valuable.”

“Yes, sir, I have,” Sirius says absently, standing, but he isn’t thinking about the lines he’d been writing for the past hour as he makes his way out of the room.

What did Bratum mean by his entire lecture? Sirius' head is spinning. Part of him wants to talk to his friends about this, but at the same time, he doesn’t know how to explain his entire family situation to them.

They’re not _bad_ , he thinks, just uptight. Sirius knows his parents have high expectations, what with the family being extremely prominent in wizarding society and the fact that he – as the oldest son – is the heir to the Black family name and fortune. It’s more about reputation than anything else. His mother is a graceful socialite with more connections and knowledge about other people than anyone else in wizarding society, her influence stretching out across the country like the minute threads of a spider’s web, all leading back to a common point. She’s mostly the one who tells him that it’s important to always be your best, and that the rest will fall into place. He’s heard this for the majority of his life, as in the years before this, he’d tag along with her to all of her social events and dinners. He got the distinct feeling that she was just showing him off to everyone she met, her _beautiful son_ , she would say to anyone she was talking to, smoothing his hair that always seemed to have at least one curl out of place, no matter how much they tried to control it.

Sirius thinks that she has his entire life laid out for him to just follow along. He doesn’t want to think about how she feels now that he’s fucking up this early into his time on his own.

His feet have taken him back to Gryffindor Tower without being stopped by any older students or teachers out in the corridors, and while he knows he was allowed to be out and about at this hour, he almost feels like he’s doing something wrong by being anywhere but the dorm when the halls are this quiet.

This feeling is reinforced by the Fat Lady when he reaches the portrait hole, who shakes her head at him and clucks her tongue, saying, “My, my, my, someone’s getting back later than he should.”

Sirius frowns. “It’s a quarter past eight.”

“Yes, but you’re a little one.”

“I’m not _little_. Indomitability.”

“Be safe, little one,” the Fat Lady calls vaguely after him as he clambers through the portrait hole and into the common room.

As expected, the common room is full of people chatting and doing their homework and taking up space, and Sirius is unsurprised that his friends haven’t managed to get the best seats by their favorite fireplace but are still fairly close. They’ve snagged a table by the window and to the right of the hearth, and Remus has his left leg hooked over the arm of the chair next to him as he writes as though to reserve it.

“Aw, you saved me a seat,” Sirius coos in an overly sentimental voice as he approaches the table, and all three of them look up from their books.

Remus snorts. “Yeah, you asked me to.” He moves his leg out of the way and Sirius sits down, slouching to an impossible angle and groaning as he slides further down in the chair.

“Sirius, thank god you’re here, Remus is making us actually do work,” James says, immediately stopping his attention to his homework.

“I’m _making_ sure you don’t fail out of school, and besides, writing six inches on the Gargoyle Strike of 1911 isn’t hard at _all_.”

“That’s easy for you to say, you’re the smartest one out of all of us. How was the detention, Sirius?” Peter asks.

“Finally, someone checks in on me. Why don’t you ask my cramping hand?” Sirius replies, holding his right hand in the air dramatically. “Nah, it wasn’t too bad. He just made me do lines and lectured me the whole time.”

“Nice. Oh, speaking of lectures,” Remus adds, reaching into his bag and pulling out a little scroll tied in a purple ribbon, “this came for you about half an hour ago. I think it’s from Dumbledore.”

“Ooh, fun,” Peter says in a sarcastic tone. “Looks like your mum managed to arrange that meeting.”

Sirius unrolls the tiny parchment. “She means well.”

“What does it say?”

“Give me a _second_ , James, hold on.” Sirius scans the parchment before reading it aloud. “ _Mr. Black, I recently received a letter from your mother that tells me she would like me to have a word with you about your Sorting. I am unfortunately not at Hogwarts until next weekend, so I will contact you then to arrange a meeting. All the best, Professor Dumbledore_. Well, that was a letdown.”

“So I guess we’ll find out what happens then,” James says, sounding slightly disappointed.

“Look, I’m all for postponing the meeting. Maybe then I won’t get lectured so consistently. It’s nice to have a break in the middle, you know?”

“Oh, I’m going to be gone next weekend,” Remus interjects, a bit absently. “My mum is sick, so they try to have me go home once a month. Ish.”

“Oh, okay. We’ll miss you.”

Remus laughs a little. “You’ll all be lost without me, I’m sure.”

“I don’t know how we’ll survive,” Sirius replies dramatically, stretching out a hand as though to caress Remus' face, but he leans out of reach. “You’re the glue that keeps our little Hogwarts family together, we’ll fall apart if you’re gone.”

“Fuck off, it’s only for a few days.”

“Oh, damn, you’re gonna miss the Quidditch trials,” James says, frowning. “Pete’s gonna have to be our only good luck charm, but we really could use two.”

“I still can’t believe you roped me into this.”

“You better believe it, Sirius, we’re gonna be the best players on the team and everyone’s gonna love us.”

“This is sure to be a disaster,” Remus says, turning his attention back to his paper. “Now I’m almost sorry I’m going to miss it.”


	6. in which quidditch and the moon have the common effect of causing injury

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt ,,, like i was when i wrote the little bit at the end. enjoy! ;)
> 
> twitter - gryffsirius  
> instagram - emmakmarie  
> tumblr - siriusorioff  
> ko-fi - gryffsirius

The bulletin board in the Gryffindor common room advertises that Quidditch trials are being held on the third Sunday in September, and that players of all skill levels and ages are welcome to fly. There aren’t many open positions, but Peter suspects that James is going to be attempting to make it into one of the Chaser positions.

“There isn’t even a Beater position open, James,” Sirius says on Saturday night, lying across the couch and taking up almost its entire length. It’s late, and mostly everyone has retired to their dorms, which means that they’ve managed to score a good position by the fire. “What am I supposed to try out for, fucking _Seeker_? I don’t have that good of an attention span.”

“We’ve noticed,” Remus replies, sitting on the floor with his back against the couch. Sirius reaches down and flicks Remus on the ear. “Ow.”

“You’re right,” James says, reaching across the open space on the floor from where he’s seated in front of the fire and pulling a blank piece of parchment from inside of Remus' bag.

“Wow, I didn’t expect you to _agree_ with my self-deprecating comments.”

The group falls silent for a moment, which isn’t uncomfortable, just a little odd. Peter doesn’t really think too much of it, considering that it’s late and they’ve a lot going on crammed into the past few weeks, but he’s noticed that Remus especially has been less talkative lately. Peter doesn’t know if this is something he can ask about, but it’s apparent that there’s something on the forefront of Remus' mind that he doesn’t really want to bring up in conversation. Maybe he’s just stressed about having to go home soon. They’d thought he’d be leaving on Friday night, but Remus had said something about how his grandparents had asked for things to be rearranged because they were going to be visiting and it was weird, but it had been cleared with all their teachers. He’s doing his work for Monday in advance right now, sitting on the ground and working away at homework that the rest of them haven’t been assigned yet.

As though James knows exactly what Peter is thinking about, he says, “Remus, I can’t believe you’re really doing your work in advance, I don’t think anyone does this. I mean, if I were to miss class, I would just catch up the next day.”

“I just have more willpower than you do, clearly.”

Sirius sits up a little on the couch and turns to look over Remus' shoulder. “Spiky Bush? What the hell is a Spiky Bush?”

Remus doesn’t look up from the diagram he’s labelling, but replies mildly, “You’ve really progressed in your profanity in the three weeks that you’ve been away from home.”

Sirius goes a bit pink and doesn’t reply.

The rest of the night passes without incident, and Remus is up and has Flooed home before breakfast. Over his bowl of Frosted Owls, James grumbles, “He didn’t even say goodbye to us.”

Peter snorts. “The last time any of us woke you up – two minutes before your alarm went off, please keep in mind – you threw your shoes.”

“Look, Pete, I’m an early riser, but I’m not _that_ much of an early riser.”

“It was two minutes!”

“It was also a terrible throw,” Sirius muses, kicking his legs absently under the table as though he’s trying to knock into Remus' purposefully left empty spot. “How do you expect to become Gryffindor Chaser if you can’t even hit us with your shoes?”

“Fuck off,” James replies.

Peter takes a bite of his blueberry and cream cheese bagel before pointing at James’ bowl. “Mate, are you sure you should be eating that much sugar this early in the morning?”

James, on his second bowl of Frosted Owls, swallows and says, “Why not? I have to keep my energy up. Quidditch later.”

“Yeah, not until the afternoon.” Sirius gestures vaguely with his toast as he speaks. “Which, by the way, I still don’t think we should do. It’s not like I’m actually good in any position other than Beater, and that’s not even open. Also, I doubt that we’re good enough to play at all for the House team.”

James waves away the suggestion with his spoon, sending a drop of milk flying across the table. “That’s coward’s talk, Sirius. We’ll do swimmingly. All we need is confidence and a lot of sugar.”

“Your parents don’t let you eat that when you’re at home, do they?”

“Look, Pete, I’m taking advantage of the opportunities that school has afforded me, and I would call that being resourceful as hell.”

Peter raises his eyebrows. “Okay, but don’t come to me when you get diabetes.”

“What’s diabetes?”

Peter supposes that with the work that they’ve been set recently they should spend the rest of the day before the Quidditch trials cranking that out, but instead they end up wandering around the grounds aimlessly for several hours. Close to the edge of the grounds, quite close by the forest, the three of them stop and watch the Whomping Willow thrash for a while. It’s a bit of a crisp day, and as it waves its branches wildly every time someone attempts to get close to it, the leaves fly off wildly.

“How hard do you think it is to actually get close enough to the trunk to touch it?” Sirius asks no one in particular as they sit on a low stone wall several hundred yards away from the tree.

“Do you think people are actually stupid enough to try and do that?” James replies. He doesn’t make it sound like a question.

“Yeah, look right over there, those are third years, aren’t they?”

“Being older isn’t going to make them any less mutilated when that tree inevitably lives up to its name.”

“Why did they even plant it? My cousin Narcissa said that it wasn’t here last year, which means they put it up during the summer, but I don’t know why.”

“I dunno, to test our ability to stay away from it probably.”

“James, that’s a terrible idea. Why would they put a dangerous fucking tree that could easily kill someone on the grounds of a school inhabited by children?”

“Damn, Pete, you sound like a grown-up.”

Peter shrugs. “All I’m saying is that it was a bad idea, unless they put it there for a specific reason.”

Sirius, after taking a sip of hot chocolate out of the Thermos that they’d decided was for collective use after Remus had brought it with him in his trunk, says, “Conspiracy theory – they put the tree there to cover something that they don’t want the students to dig up, like, I don’t know, the body of an ex-headmaster or some kind of magical object or a secret tunnel or –”

“You idiot, that can’t be it, why would they hide something on _school_ grounds, don’t they know how many kids get into things? Like, it’s not exactly hard for us to try and find things to do that we aren’t supposed to, it wouldn’t be that hard to figure it out.”

There’s a pause. All three of them look at the tree in a moment of silence, before Peter shakes his head and clears his throat.

“What time were Quidditch trials? It’s almost lunch, weren’t they pretty soon after?”

“Oh, shit, you’re right, Pete. Come on, we have to go, Sirius and I need to change.”

“Do we _have_ to?” Sirius complains as Peter and James stand and start walking back to the castle, not moving from his spot on the wall yet. “Maybe I’ll just sit and watch you do yours, I can go for it when there’s actually an open position for me. You know, in like two years?”

James turns around, continuing to walk backwards up the hill. “What, and make me do this by myself?” He waves his arms around wildly as if to make a point. “Sirius, you’re my other half, the song in my heart, the best friend I’ve ever or will ever have – I’m exaggerating, Pete, stop looking at me like that – I cannot _possibly_ do this without you.”

Sirius groans. “Ugh, fine, whatever you want, but I’m only going to stand there with you, I’m not actually going to fly. I’m out of practice.”

“You know what? I’ll take it.”

Lunch passes without incident, aside from James talking nonstop about how great he thinks it’ll be to be on the team and how much he hopes that he doesn’t make an idiot of himself. Peter considers telling him to slow down on the constant devouring of food, but James seems to be handling everything well so far. He thinks that James might talk more when he’s nervous, which would make sense, considering the lengthy soliloquies coming out of his mouth right now, but he just listens and lets James do his thing.

They’re getting changed in their room when James stands up suddenly, shirt halfway on, pointing at Sirius over Remus' bed, and says, “You’re out of practice, right?”

Sirius shrugs. “Yeah, a bit.”

“We should go down to the pitch early! Look, we ate early so we have some time before the trials, I bet none of the team is even down there yet!”

Peter frowns, sitting on his own bed. “I dunno, won’t Madam Hooch get mad at us?”

“Who says she’s going to be there?”

“James, she handles literally everything to do with flying at Hogwarts, why _wouldn’t_ she be there?”

James pulls his shirt all the way on and replies, “Look, at _most_ the only person who’ll be there is the captain.”

“What’s her name again? She’s that scary fifth year, right? McGonagall’s niece?”

“I think she’s called Gillian? But that might be her middle name. I don’t know. I’ve never talked to her. She’s really tall.”

After James and Sirius grab their brooms from where they’re leaning against the large wardrobe in the dorm, the three of them make their way out of the castle and down to the Quidditch pitch, chatting aimlessly and bumping elbows and feeling like they’re missing a huge part of their friendship without Remus there. None of them speak about it, because they know he’ll be back soon, but Peter hopes that he’s doing okay. He doesn’t know what it’s like to have a sick parent or to be sick himself, but judging from how quiet Remus was yesterday, he thinks that maybe he’s struggling a bit with the whole situation.

The pitch is quiet, with barely any students sitting in the stands, but because they don’t seem to actually be playing – Peter thinks that they might have just snuck down here to have some alone time, considering that there’s only two of them and they seem awfully close and a fair bit older – James decides that it’s okay for them to take some practice time before the trials.

“Pete, will you stand there and tell us how we’re doing?” Sirius asks before he takes off completely, hovering about five feet off the ground.

“How should I know if you’re doing well, I don’t know anything about Quidditch.” Peter looks around then, realizing something. “Wait, you don’t even have a Quaffle, I thought this was about James practicing his Chaser skills.”

“Oh, shit, uh, is there a ball or something in the stands?” James calls, coming to a stop by Peter and Sirius after making a circle around the pitch.

After a bit of digging around (they couldn’t seem to figure out how to get into the broom shed to get an actual regulation Quaffle from inside), Peter manages to find a dingy old football that seems to have been sitting there for years. He throws it as hard as he can from the sixth row, and Sirius catches it, immediately making a face. “Gross.”

“It’ll do,” James says hastily. “Hurry, we only have half an hour before the trials are supposed to start.”

Peter watches as Sirius and James spend the next fifteen minutes actually practicing, and then immediately devolve into fucking around. He shouts vague encouragements at them when James makes his shots, and then things like _do a flip!_ when they start flying more wildly.

People are starting to arrive at the pitch for the trials, and when Peter looks around, he can see the current Gryffindor Quidditch team making their way in. “Hey, they’re almost here,” he yells, and catches Sirius' attention.

“One second!” James shouts back, looking back at Sirius and then adding, “I just wanna try one more thing!”

“What is it?”

James cups his hands around his mouth and yells, “If Sirius and I both fly from one side of the pitch to the other, we can meet in the middle and high-five each other and it’ll be _so_ cool!”

“Nice!” Peter replies, at the same volume. “I’ll give the signal!”

“Cool! Thanks Pete!” James flies to one end of the pitch, and Sirius, noticing the knot of potential team players gathered near the stands and watching the shenanigans unfold, waves at them with a grin before following suit and flying to the other side.

There’s a brief moment of pause when they’re both hovering near the goal posts, and Peter is vaguely aware of Professor McGonagall herself arriving at the pitch with her niece, but he brushes that aside as he stands and shouts, “GO!”

It’s only when two of his best friends are flying towards each other at breakneck speed without any practice in this seemingly simple trick at all that Peter realizes that this might not have been the best idea.

Credit where credit is due, all of James’ bragging about his Quidditch skills and his spectacular aim and his high-quality broom is accurate. He moves through the air fluidly and his hand is in exactly the right position to give Sirius a killer high five as soon as they meet in the center of the pitch.

Sirius, on the other hand, did warn James that he was out of practice, and while his intentions were to have the coolest mid-air high-five in existence, he’s misjudged his flying and speed and hand positioning, and Peter watches as he misses James’ hand completely and smacks him in the face.

“Oh, shit!” Sirius yells, wheeling around immediately and coming to a stop, just quick enough to see James falling backwards off his broom and falling to the ground. There’s a sick crack as his left leg hits the ground first.

“Fuck,” Peter says under his breath and runs down the steps of the stands, shoving past people who are similarly rushing forwards, and making it to James just as Sirius lands next to him.

“James, are you okay? Shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, I thought it was going to work, I’m so, so sorry, I must’ve –” Sirius is rambling nearly incoherently as he kneels down next to James, almost pulling him into a sitting position and stopping when James cries out in pain.

“Shit, this was such a bad idea,” Peter mutters, and James, who hasn’t yet said anything, laughs a little. “This was all your shit idea, you’re so fucking lucky you weren’t that far off the ground, you _idiot_.”

“It’s okay,” James says weakly, and is about to continue speaking when he’s cut off by a furious voice.

“No, Mr. Potter, it is most certainly _not_ okay, you could have been _killed_ ,” Professor McGonagall says sharply. She’s made her way to the front of the gathered crowd. “Back away,” Professor McGonagall orders the students, who retreat obediently. She crouches next to James, checks over his leg, then looks at him witheringly, saying slowly and deliberately, “I don’t know what on earth you were thinking when you and Mr. Black decided to launch yourselves directly at each other in midair but you’re very lucky that only your leg is broken.”

“Professor, I –”

“I am _not_ interested in hearing excuses, Mr. Black. This lack of responsibility and thought from the two of you is astounding. Mr. Pettigrew, I expected better from you, as well. Twenty points will be taken from Gryffindor, you will both receive a detention, and I will be speaking to Professor Dumbledore about your flying privileges and those of other first year students in the future.”

Peter doesn’t know what to say. James manages, “Yes, Professor,” and McGonagall nods before standing.

“Now, I will accompany you to the hospital wing and explain the situation to Madam Pomfrey so that the pitch can be cleared for trials. Come with me,” Professor McGonagall commands, and Sirius and Peter stand, backing up so that she can conjure a stretcher for James and levitate him back towards the castle.

Passing the various groups of students watching and whispering as they leave the pitch, Peter can’t help but think how fucking glad he is that he’s shit enough at flying to never want to leave the ground.

-

The night of September 19th, 1971 is far clearer than tends to be desirable on a night like tonight, and the moon is bright on the rundown house outside of the little town.

For the first time, but certainly not the last, the villagers hear strange noises coming from the long-abandoned building upon the moonrise and try to dismiss it as nothing. After all, they’ve been informed of what lurks in the shadows of that ramshackle house once a month, they knew this was coming. They lock their doors and keep themselves inside.

The wolf locked inside the house wants nothing more than to break out. The boy locked inside the wolf wants the same.


	7. in which remus starts the day by being talked at and sirius ends it the same way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is my favorite chapter i've written for this story so far. i hope you like it. thank you <3
> 
> twitter - gryffsirius  
> instagram - emmakmarie  
> tumblr - siriusorioff  
> ko-fi - gryffsirius

“So, what are you in for?”

Remus wakes up in the hospital wing on Monday morning, the curtains around his bed drawn, sunlight streaming through the window behind him, and acutely aware of James’ voice to his right.

“I don’t even know if you’re awake, it’s pretty early, to be fair, I think it’s like… seven? Yeah, it’s seven, I just checked my watch. I just thought it would be funny to ask it like that. I get if you don’t want to talk about it, I’m James, by the way.”

Remus doesn’t know what the fuck he’s supposed to do. Does he keep silent? Does he say something? He thinks he shouldn’t speak, because James probably thinks that he’s in Wales right now, but he doesn’t know how _not_ to reply.

James doesn’t seem bothered at all by Remus' lack of response, he’s just continued talking the whole time. “I’m in because I broke my leg falling off my broom. I know, it was stupid, but hey, it’s not my fault that Sirius smacked me in the face instead of high-fiving me. Sirius is my friend. He might even be my best friend, I don’t know. He’s nice. I like him. Anyway, we were trying to do a trick before the Gryffindor Quidditch trials and it was supposed to be a mid-air high-five, and he hit my face instead of my hand and I fell backwards off my broom.”

It’s surprising that it took James that long to pause, but he begins speaking again momentarily, continuing, “Sorry, I had to have a drink of water. Anyway, McGonagall saw the whole thing, and she was _pissed_ that we’d been so –” Remus can picture James doing air quotes here, “– _irresponsible_ , and she took twenty points from Gryffindor and gave us both detentions. And you know what? That’s not even the worst thing about it. Do you want to know the worst thing?”

James pauses as if to give Remus a chance to reply. He doesn’t.

“The _worst_ thing is she talked to Dumbledore and got him to ban all first years from owning their own brooms. Apparently since we were unsupervised that’s why we got into an accident, but let me tell you, we probably would’ve done it anyway even if we were older or being watched by Madam Hooch or something. I don’t know. Anyway, now we – and first years after us – aren’t allowed to bring their own brooms to Hogwarts because if you use a school broom you have to be supervised by a teacher. It’s like, a weird loophole or something. Also, Sirius and I got banned from trying out again until third year, which is total shit, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

Remus stays silent, which is difficult at this point, because he’s trying not to laugh.

“My leg wasn’t even that bad, to be fair, Madam Pomfrey just wanted to keep me overnight for observation. I’m okay now, she says I can go to my classes today. Shame, I wanted to see if I could get out of them, but I think that might be pushing my luck even more with McGonagall.”

Remus can hear approaching footsteps; no doubt Madam Pomfrey has taken note of James’ lively chatter and has come over to check on him and make sure that he isn’t talking too much to Remus. He doesn’t know why James was put in the bed next to him if his presence here is meant to be a secret, especially since James is one of his best friends. He’s sure James wouldn’t have talked so much if they had been three feet apart for the whole night.

“Anyway, I’ve been talking a lot. I probably woke you up, if I did, I’m sorry. My mum says I’m a chatterbox, but I just talk a lot when I’m nervous, and sometimes when it’s quiet it makes me nervous. Good morning, Madam Pomfrey, how did you sleep?”

“Just fine, Mr. Potter, how are we feeling this morning?” Remus can hear Madam Pomfrey bustling around James’ bed, presumably checking his leg to make sure it was properly healed and that he was safe to head out to his classes.

“I’m doing well, I made a new friend, even though whoever this is doesn’t talk much.” James sounds like he’s almost laughing. “I tried to make a ‘what are you in for’ joke, but I don’t think it landed very well.”

“Well, that’s probably because your fellow student over here has a strong case of laryngitis, so he’s on vocal rest.”

“What’s laryngitis?”

Madam Pomfrey sighs. “Oh, I always forget, you wizarding children have no idea about Muggle diseases. It essentially makes your throat very sore due to overexertion of your vocal cords, so that’s why our friend here is being silent for the time being. We’ve pulled him out of class to make sure that he doesn’t strain himself.”

“Oh, okay,” James replies. “I hope you feel better,” he says directly to Remus, through the curtain, who huffs a little laugh to himself but doesn’t reply.

“Speaking of feeling better, I do believe you’re clear to go, Mr. Potter. Try to be more careful on your broom from now on, will you?”

“Yes ma’am, of course.” Remus hears the distinct sound of James gathering up his things and making his way out of the hospital wing. When the large doors close behind him, Madam Pomfrey opens the curtains surrounding Remus' bed and sighs.

“Laryngitis?” Remus asks.

“I had to think on my feet for that one,” Madam Pomfrey replies, chuckling. “How are you feeling this morning? I know last night was a rough one.”

Remus hadn’t wanted to think about last night at all. Madam Pomfrey had come to the Shrieking Shack to fetch him when the moon had set but before the sun had risen, and he’d gotten a few hours of sleep in the hospital wing before now, so he hadn’t exactly had to think about the events of last night.

She was right, though. It was rough. Remus thinks that maybe it was worse because he wasn’t at home, because everything had changed, because the moon was bright last night and the wolf was getting used to being in a new location and it had torn open his body like he was made of tissue paper stitched together with loose string. Since Remus had woken up, he’d become aware of a nasty cut on the inside of his left forearm that was currently covered by a bandage, but as soon as he’d looked at it, he’d remembered that it was there. His head is pounding and the tips of his fingers are tingly and his insides feel like they’ve been scooped out of him with a melon baller and then hastily dumped back inside as the moon had set.

In response to Madam Pomfrey’s question, however, Remus shrugs. “I’ve had worse,” he says.

He’s not lying. He has.

Madam Pomfrey looks like she doesn’t quite believe him and that she thinks he’s putting on a fit of gallantry to seem more collected than he really is, but Remus has never been dishonest with his Healers before in his life and he isn’t about to start now. She doesn’t voice this concern, however, just says, “Let’s have a look at that cut then,” and reaches over to peel back his bandage.

It’s remarkably more healed than Remus was expecting, and he supposes that if he can thank his lycanthropy for one thing, it’s a body that recovers quickly from its own self-destruction. Madam Pomfrey layers his cut in dittany and bandages him back up and tells him that she’ll be back soon, she’s going to breakfast and she’ll have a tray brought in for him.

“Okay,” Remus replies, not really thinking too much about it. “When do you think I’ll be able to go back to the dorm? I didn’t exactly have a set schedule when this happened at home, I just. Stayed in bed until I felt better.”

Madam Pomfrey pauses for a moment, then says, “We’ll see how you feel come dinner time. I would _prefer_ to keep you for one more night just to be safe, but if you’ve improved by then and you’re determined to go, I don’t see why not. We’ll see,” she repeats, before smiling at him and heading out the door.

She’s only gone for fifteen minutes, and in that time the curtains are drawn again and a seventh year aspiring Healer is sitting in the office doing paperwork. Remus knows that if he _really_ needs something, then he can ask the seventh year for help, but he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself. Not from any other students. He doesn’t think anything would come of it, but he doesn’t want to risk anyone knowing. The teachers are already enough.

The day drags on, and by the time it’s three in the afternoon, Remus is already both bored and feeling much better. He thinks that he just always lets himself get used to the ease of being _himself_ between the moons that it hits him that much harder when it rolls back around. He should’ve known that this one was going to be worse than he’d been experiencing before, because of all the distractions and the running around and the school and the friends and the wolf acclimating to a new environment and his body being so fucking tired all the time. Sometimes he feels like he’s sixty years old. Sometimes he has to remind himself that he’s eleven.

Remus writes a letter to his parents and tells them that the moon was fine, that they shouldn’t worry, that he loves being here and that he’s so lucky to have friends like he does already. There’s a nagging feeling in the back of his mind, one that’s been there all day, one that got stronger when James started talking to him this morning. The tiny anxiety monster kicking him in the amygdala is whispering _they're gonna find out and they're gonna leave you_ with every swing of its little leg and Remus is trying to ignore it, but he can’t. The more he feels it the more the monster takes shape and it’s a wolf now, there was a shattered mirror in the Shack and that’s what the wolf in his mind looks like, and he wants to shut it out, he’s trying to, but sometimes it’s hard.

Madam Pomfrey comes to check on him at four, and since her biggest concern was the massive cut on his arm (which has almost completely healed, at least enough to not be noticeable) and his fatigue levels (which he can convince her are fine), Remus is able to wheedle his way into being allowed to go back to the common room, citing that spending the night in his own bed, after having a nice time with his friends, will help him feel much more better than staying in the hospital wing for longer.

He packs up his little bag of things that he’d dropped off at the hospital wing the day before, changes into a jumper and a pair of jeans, and heads back towards Gryffindor Tower.

Remus makes it back rather quickly, opening the portrait hole with the password just as the tunnel is full of his friends clambering out of it.

“Remus!” Sirius exclaims, jumping down from the tunnel, his voice bright. “I didn’t think we’d see you until tomorrow morning, we missed you!”

“Well,” Remus says, realizing he doesn’t have an explanation for coming back far earlier than he had previously said, “I’m back early.”

“Hey,” James interjects, hopping down and immediately pulling Remus into a hug, “missed you, love you, you sound tired, I had a near death experience and got brooms banned for first years from now into eternity, how was your visit home?”

“It…was great, James, you’re very affectionate right now.”

Peter climbs down from the portrait hole finally and comes over. “Oh, I want to get in on this. Group hug, Sirius, you too.”

Over James’ shoulder, Remus thinks that Sirius looks a little reluctant, but he lets himself get pulled into the group and they all stand there for a few seconds and it’s nice. Sometimes after the moon he doesn’t want to be touched by anyone, sometimes he would push his mum aside when she tried to pull him into her arms, sometimes he would yell at his dad not to touch him because of the way the wolf completely shredded his body and his sense of self and made him feel like he was less than nothing, but James’ hands are gentle and Sirius' hair smells nice and Peter is gently swaying and making all four of them move, so he feels safe. Not that he didn’t at home, but a different kind of safe. A safe he didn’t think he would be able to have here.

The wolf in the back of his mind making his anxiety spiral outwards snarls at him about how he’ll never keep these friends, never, and Remus shuts his eyes and lets the sound of Sirius starting to giggle drown it out.

He clears his throat and steps back from the group. “Where were you going?”

Peter shrugs. “Just to walk around until dinner. Then Sirius has a meeting with Dumbledore.”

“Really?” Remus turns to look at Sirius. “What did he say?”

“Nothing, really, he just sent me a note asking me to go to his office after dinner. At seven. The password is apparently Bat’s Blood Soup.”

James makes a face. “That’s disgusting.”

“I heard a rumor that his office passwords are always names of sweets.”

“Where did you hear _that_?”

“My cousin Bella, she knows everything.” They’ve started walking at this point, meandering through the halls in the golden afternoon light, autumn making the sun set faster than is practical for their wandering the grounds on a Monday after classes.

They don’t do much, just end up sitting under the big tree by the lake, listening to James recount the story of the Quidditch crash once again, Remus pretending like he hasn’t heard it before and Sirius and Peter acting it out and mimicking James’ phrasing when he says certain words.

“How many times have you _told_ this story, James?” Remus asks, his back against the tree and the wind ruffling his hair.

James shrugs. “I dunno, at least four.”

It seems to Remus that they’ve just barely sat down under the tree before James is looking at his watch and saying, “Oh, shit, it’s almost six, we have to get in or all the good food will be gone.”

“I can’t imagine them starting without us,” Peter says dryly, standing and extending a hand for someone to take so that he can pull them up as well. Sirius grabs it, and Remus gets pulled up by James.

Dinner passes much like any other meal, and before any of them know it, it’s nearly seven and Sirius is standing to make his way to Dumbledore’s office. “Wish me luck,” he says, trying to come off nonchalant, but knowing that he isn’t succeeding from the way that his friends look at him and then back at each other, almost imperceptibly.

“Good luck,” Remus replies, and Sirius nods before leaving the Great Hall.

He’s early, like he always seems to be when he’s told to meet with a professor, and even though he’s no one important and the clock hasn’t quite hit seven yet, he knows the password, so the stone gargoyle lets him aside without hesitation. After ascending the steps, Sirius knocks on the door, and there’s half a moment of pause before he hears Dumbledore’s voice say, “Enter,” and he does.

Dumbledore’s office is full of trinkets and baubles and strange noises and magical objects, but Sirius doesn’t pay attention to any of them – he’s too focused on the man sitting behind the desk. Dumbledore is sitting there, watching him advance, waiting patiently for him, and waits until Sirius has gotten close enough to stand right in front of it to say, “Ah, Mr. Black, thank you for meeting me.”

Sirius doesn’t quite know what to say, considering Dumbledore is making it sound like he had to beg Sirius to come to his office for this conversation, and not like his mother arranged it. “Of – of course,” he manages.

“Take a seat, please,” Dumbledore says, gesturing to the large purple armchair next to Sirius, who tentatively sits.

There’s a slight pause, then Dumbledore continues, “Now, I understand that you’ve been having some trouble with a variety of factors since you came to Hogwarts, Sirius.”

Sirius doesn’t reply.

“That’s nothing to be ashamed of. Many people have trouble adjusting to new environments, it just takes time.”

“I’m not having trouble adjusting,” Sirius says under his breath.

“Pardon?” Dumbledore asks, a smile on his face, and Sirius gets a flash of irritation from how certain he is that Dumbledore heard exactly what he said and is just choosing to make him repeat himself.

“I’m not _having_ trouble adjusting,” Sirius repeats, louder. “I’ve adjusted just fine. My mother sent me a letter saying that she was concerned about my House placement and wanted me to speak with you to see if there’s anything that can be done about it.”

“She wants you to be in Slytherin, doesn’t she?”

“It’s tradition. I’m supposed to do things right.”

“Well,” Dumbledore says slowly. “The Sorting Hat wouldn’t have placed you in Gryffindor if you didn’t belong there. It does not make mistakes.”

As much as Sirius likes being in Gryffindor, there’s a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach when Dumbledore says that. He hasn’t exactly gotten any snide remarks or shitty comments, but there have been looks. He thinks there might be whispers. He doesn’t know. All he knows is that as much as he likes where he is, he thinks it would have been easier if he had been in Slytherin. It might be easier if he transfers now. It can’t be that big of a deal, can it?

“Oh,” he says instead of voicing his thoughts.

“Now, I know that your mother expected you to come in here and get this situation all sorted and taken care of completely, but despite what Walburga thinks, that’s sadly not in my power. It’s not possible for you to be switched to a different House, just as it’s not possible for me to jump back into the curriculum as a student right now. We can think about it all we want to, but the fact of the matter is, it can’t happen. Things are just not meant to be that way.”

Sirius doesn’t feel like this meeting has been particularly effective. Unless he’s missed the point entirely, there…hasn’t been a point to this at all.

Dumbledore spouts some more vague advice about staying true to himself and following his heart, and Sirius nods along and pretends that he isn’t disappointed by the results of this meeting and that he didn’t want to be able to walk out of here knowing that he would be back on track to making his parents proud. He keeps mostly silent and listens and drops the occasional _yes sir_ just to keep the conversation going and finally Dumbledore says that he’ll write a letter to Sirius' mother explaining the situation, and that he should go back to his dorm.

He’s back with his friends less than fifteen minutes later, all four of them squeezed onto a couch, legs crossed over each other and leaning back as far as they can make themselves go, looking up at the ceiling of the common room. None of the other boys had asked Sirius about how the meeting had went immediately, and Sirius had been grateful for that; he thinks that they’d known from his face that he hadn’t been ready to talk about it yet.

“I’m not switching Houses, by the way, that’s not allowed,” Sirius says finally.

“Oh. Good, we’d miss you,” Remus replies softly, sounding as tired as Sirius feels, and the four of them sit together in a few more moments of silence before James changes the subject and they all launch back into normalcy for the rest of the night.


	8. in which peter turns orange and james tries to start traditions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this one is a little late! normally i upload at 10 my time but i slept in a little too late today. anyway, please enjoy and let me know what you think!!

September and most of October roll past faster than James can blink, the days full of classes and laughter and homework and before he knows it, it’s the 27th, the halls are being lined with thousands of tiny pumpkins, the air is crisp and when the wind comes in the right direction he can smell the deep earthy scent of the forest from the dorm window, and his favorite holiday is rapidly approaching.

“I love Halloween,” James says unnecessarily at breakfast on that Wednesday morning, watching between Remus and Sirius' heads as Filch attempts – unsuccessfully – to hang a delicately strung garland of autumn leaves all the way around the Great Hall. “It’s the best day of the year.”

Peter snorts. “I’m sorry, have you never experienced Christmas?”

“Yeah, but Halloween is the _best_ , you get to dress up, you get sweets, you get to walk around at _night,_ completely _unsupervised_ –”

“What kind of town did _you_ grow up in?” Remus asks under his breath, and Sirius laughs around a mouthful of toast.

“First of all, Sirius, that’s disgusting, the least you could’ve done was to keep your mouth shut so that the crumbs didn’t spray everywhere. Second, _Remus_ , Godric’s Hollow is very safe, I’ve never once had to worry about walking around by myself. Third, to finish my point, you get to dress up and you get sweets. What more could you want? And that concludes my pro-Halloween argument.”

There’s a slight pause. “You still didn’t say a single reason why Halloween is better than Christmas,” Peter says, and James launches into a lengthy speech about _the spookiest night of the year_ , accompanied by an appropriate wiggle of the fingers, that lasts the remainder of breakfast.

“Do people actually dress up here?” Remus asks hours later, after their classes are over and they’re sitting under the tree by the lake. It’s colder than they thought it was going to be, a sharp wind whipping through the leaves, making them lean against each other and the tree, drawing their cloaks tightly around their bodies. “I’ve never really been into Halloween, I always thought I was too old for it.”

“What, like when you were four? Even then?”

Remus shrugs. “I don’t know, I never really did it. If I did, I don’t remember.”

Frowning, James leans around Remus to look at Sirius and Peter. “You two have done Halloween before, right? I’m not the only one?”

“I have,” Peter volunteers, and James high-fives him.

“I’m in the same boat as Remus,” Sirius says, then pauses to sniff a little and rub at his nose. It’s a little pink from the cold and his hair, slightly longer than anyone else’s, is flying around from the wind and keeps hitting Remus in the face. “I think Halloween counts as something that used to be an important wizarding holiday, which is why my parents had a party every year, but that’s all. I didn’t dress up.”

There’s a pause, then James leaps to his feet, shouting, “This is a _travesty_!” Peter jumps a little from his volume, but James ignores him. “Okay, we have four days, we can throw together a classic Halloween experience for the two of you who apparently didn’t have _childhoods_ , Pete, will you help me plan?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Absolutely not. We have a few days to come up with a costume theme for the four of us, and I hear the seventh years throw a party in the common room every year, so at least we’ll have a fun time.”

“Can’t believe I’ll never get to go trick-or-treating,” Remus deadpans, “how will I possibly survive?”

James kicks him lightly in response, then immediately starts rattling off ideas.

In the end, they manage to settle on hastily thrown together theme from a recently released Muggle film that only Sirius doesn’t understand, the four of them running around the castle trying to get the supplies that they need and eventually managing to scrape together a passable interpretation of four characters from _Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory_.

Before dinner two nights before Halloween, James pokes his head into the Transfiguration classroom after running through the hall, grabbing onto the door frame to stop himself from skidding on the smooth stones and saying quickly, “Hey, Professor, is there a spell to turn someone’s skin orange and their hair green?”

Professor McGonagall looks up from the papers she’s grading at her desk, her brow slightly furrowed and her glasses slipping down her nose. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Potter?”

James steps into the classroom, trotting up to her desk. “A spell. For Halloween. We’re trying to have the best costumes.”

“And who is ‘we’?”

“Um…Sirius and Remus and Peter and me.”

“I see.” Professor McGonagall looks like she’s trying not to laugh, but James might be misinterpreting that. One time he thought that he was being clever and funny and it turned out that she thought he was being impertinent and gave him a sharp talking to. “Well, that’s a bit above your level, Mr. Potter, but if you and the other boys come to my classroom before the Halloween festivities begin, I’ll see what I can do to help you out with the accuracy of your costumes.”

“Really?” James can barely control his enthusiasm. “Thanks, Professor, you’re the best!”

“Good news, Pete,” he huffs out after sprinting to the Great Hall, where his friends are already seated. He crashes onto the bench next to Sirius, rushing out, “McGonagall says she’ll help.”

“I still can’t believe you’re making me be the Oompa Loompa,” Peter grumbles, stabbing at the pasta on his plate.

“You’d be more successful with that if you twirled it around your fork,” Sirius comments unnecessarily.

“Fuck off, do you think I don’t know how to eat? Are you _that_ posh that you have to coach me on how to properly eat pasta?”

Sirius looks a little hurt at that, but just says, “Ouch,” and nothing else. Peter makes a face that seems to indicate that he’s regretting using such a harsh tone, but before he says anything else, James swiftly jumps back to the original subject.

“I’m not _making_ you be the Oompa Loompa, you’re the shortest. Sirius is Veruca Salt because he’s rich, and Remus is Violet Beauregard because who else is he going to be, Charlie Bucket? Mike Teavee? Hell no, they both suck, he has to be someone at least decent.”

“You know, while I admire your passion for giving me a good character, James, I think you might be the only person in history who said that Charlie Bucket sucks,” Remus replies.

“Look, he’s _boring_ ,” James says. “And let’s be honest, the real star of the show is Mr. Willy Wonka himself, and since Halloween was _my_ idea –”

Sirius snorts. “What, the entire holiday? You invented it?”

“Shut up. Dressing up as a theme this year was my idea, so I get to be Willy Wonka.”

“You know, we only didn’t argue with you on this because we didn’t have any better ideas.”

“Well, you know what, Pete? If you don’t want this to happen again next year, you’d better start thinking of ideas now.”

“Oh, god, we have to do this again next _year_?” Remus groans, and James points at him from across the table.

“Remus, you lucky bastard, as long as you’re friends with me, you get to do this _every_ year.”

By the time Halloween has actually dawned, James is so excited and full of energy that he can barely sit still. He’s already a morning person, but today he’s awake at a frankly ungodly hour, judging from the silence of the dorm as soon as he wakes up. Well, silent aside from Peter snoring slightly. James considers throwing something at him to make him roll over but manages to resist the urge.

It’s Sunday, and even though it’s a holiday, Remus seems to think that they should actually do some work before having fun, which is a fair idea but still difficult, considering the seventh years are spending the afternoon setting up the common room for the party.

“You know, are we even allowed to go to the party?” Sirius muses, sitting sideways in an armchair so that his legs are hanging off of one side, his head dangling off of the other. “We’re eleven.”

James looks around at the party being put together and gestures wildly at the setup. “What makes you think that we won’t be allowed to be here? We’re cool as hell.”

“Sure,” Peter says, not looking up from the little drawing of a jack-o-lantern he’s doodling instead doing his Herbology homework. “Keep telling yourself that, James.”

“Look, I don’t know about you, but I’m… I’m closer to twelve than I am to eleven, so I think they should let us be here.”

“What, all of us should be invited to parties just because of you? When’s your birthday?”

“March 27th.”

“Oh, I’m older than you,” Remus says casually, and James claps a hand to his heart in an expression of mock betrayal. “March 10th.”

Peter throws up a peace sign and adds, “I’m a summer solstice baby.”

“Wow, I’m older than all of you,” Sirius replies, not lifting his head at all, so his voice sounds slightly flattened from the weird positioning of his throat.

“Really? When’s your birthday?”

James gets the distinct impression that Sirius is trying to remain nonchalant about this, like he didn’t really want to make a big deal out of his birthday or anything, but James has always thought that birthdays are important to celebrate, which is why he feels slightly shocked that he didn’t know about this beforehand when Sirius shrugs and says, “Wednesday.”

“What?” Remus asks, his voice a little hushed, as though Sirius had just told them a life-altering secret and not that his birthday was coming up. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“It’s not a big deal,” Sirius replies easily, looking up at the ceiling. He turns his head to look at Remus. “We never make a big thing out of birthdays at home, it’s not important.”

“Uh, yes, it is, it marks the anniversary of the day the world was blessed with your presence, which is, coincidentally, why you get _presents_ , get it?” James says, laughter consuming his words as he speaks. “We have to do something for you.”

Sirius scrunches his eyebrows. “Like what?”

“Well, I mean, we can’t tell you that, it’s supposed to be a surprise until your actual birthday.”

“He’s just saying that because he doesn’t have any ideas,” Peter interjects.

“Hey, you didn’t have to call me out like that.”

“I only speak the truth, JP.”

Before the feast is set to begin, the four of them wrangle their way into their makeshift costumes and manage to convince Professor McGonagall to transfigure Peter’s hair and skin color to make him look as brilliantly hued as an actual Oompa Loompa – which is difficult, considering that she’s genuinely laughing this time, upon seeing their outfits – and once they're ready, they head down to the Great Hall to the feast.

It’s upon entering the Great Hall that James realizes that a very small percentage of students are dressed up.

“We look like idiots,” Remus mutters under his breath as they walk to their usual spots, adjusting the collar of the blue ensemble that James had insisted he wear. “I look like a fucking berry.”

“I don’t see what you’re complaining about, we’re _clearly_ going to win the costume contest,” James replies loudly, waltzing down the aisle between the tables slightly ahead of his friends, twirling his decorative cane and tipping his top hat at anyone who gives him a particularly incredulous look.

“There _isn’t_ a costume contest –” Sirius starts to say as they sit, but he’s interrupted by Marlene looking around Lily from two seats down to wedge her way into the conversation.

“Nice outfits, whose idea was it to dress like a bunch of uncoordinated circus performers?”

Lily turns to look at them and bursts out laughing. “Why is Pettigrew orange?”

“You should know this, shouldn’t you, Evans? You’re Muggle born, you’ve seen movies.”

“Just because I’ve seen _movies_ doesn’t mean I’ve seen every movie in existence, Potter.”

James points at her with his cane, nearly knocking Peter into his cup of pumpkin juice as he does. “Well, you should invest some time in watching _Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory_. It’s a modern classic.”

“I read the book,” Lily replies.

“So did I,” Remus adds, and the conversation devolves mostly into the two of them talking about various books that they’d read over their childhoods that James has never heard of. He’s surprised at his own knowledge of this film, but he’s always enjoyed Muggles and their technology to some degree. He’d gone with his dad to the cinema many times, but when they’d gone over the summer it had felt like more of a bonding activity, because James had known he was going away soon.

He doesn’t like to admit that he misses home, even though he writes his parents every week and they’ve talked over the Floo several times. Maybe this particular costume theme was a way of feeling like things weren’t different this year. This is a theme that his dad would like, they would’ve done this together. James loves being here, being with his friends, being at school and learning things and feeling like he’s becoming a real person, but sometimes he wishes he was home.

Christmas is around the corner though, and he’s looking forward to it. James won’t admit it, but Peter was right. Christmas has a different feeling, and as much as James loves Halloween, the strong feeling of _family_ that he gets every December always makes him feel safe.

For all the effort that James put into organizing the costumes, the most recognition that the four of them get is a few questioning glances and some _oh_ s from Muggle Studies students who may have seen the film. There’s much less of a costume contest than any of them were expecting, and James is disappointed when the prize – a gift certificate to Honeydukes in Hogsmeade – gets handed out to a pair of fifth years who went as a single centaur.

“This was a bust,” Peter says as they sit on the floor by the fire. For once, the girls have been invited to sit with them in their little circle in the common room, instead of it only being the four of them. “I got turned into a human tangerine for _nothing_.”

James is trying and failing not to be hyper-aware of Lily sitting next to him, but she isn’t talking to him, she’s engaged in a conversation with Mary, so he’s able to keep a lid on the way she makes his stomach all jittery.

“We could’ve passed as fruits, look, Pete, you’re a tangerine, I’m an apple, Remus is a blueberry, James is…” Sirius gestures vaguely at James. “I don’t know, some kind of brown banana?”

James throws his hands in the air in exasperation. “You could’ve said I was a _pear_ at the very least.”

“How could he say that, there’s only one of you,” Remus says, grinning.

The party goes on around them, but they’ve been turned away from certain buffet tables several times (Sirius stands on the back of the couch and looks over heads and determines that it’s where they’re keeping the alcohol, and they begin trying to guess how long it will be before McGonagall gets wind and comes to break up the party) so after eating as much as they can, there isn’t really any point to them staying up any longer.

“We didn’t really do anything Halloween-y,” Remus says when they go up to the dorm half an hour later. None of them really feel like going to sleep, they just all cram onto Peter’s bed by the window and watch the night sky, jostling each other every time one of them shifts but not being bothered by the close contact at all.

“We could go out to the forest,” James says jokingly, and the four of them look around at each other for a moment before collectively deciding that tonight isn’t the night.

They fall asleep in a big heap on Peter’s bed, still in their clothes, and no one sets an alarm. They’re late waking up in the morning, missing breakfast entirely, but manage to make it to their classes in time. Peter’s still orange and green until they get to Transfiguration, but lucky for him it’s a Monday and they have McGonagall first period. Snape sneers at them in the halls for their costumes and James wants to punch him but settles for calling him a prick and almost hexing him, stopping himself just before a Ravenclaw prefect rounds the corner.

Sirius' birthday is a remarkably small affair, considering none of them knew about it for more than four days before and didn’t have time to get him anything, but after class on that Wednesday, Sirius falls asleep on the couch and Peter suggests sneaking down to the kitchens to bake him a cake. It’s so badly made – Remus is convinced that he’ll ruin any culinary attempt that he’s even near and James has no experience with baking whatsoever – but Peter does his best with the help of the house elves after they follow the instructions of one of the Prewett twins to get into the kitchens.

They eat the cake on the floor of their room instead of going to dinner and as Sirius blows out the candles, laughing at their shitty decorating job with the fancy scarf his parents had sent him strewn carelessly over his shoulders, James can feel himself settling into easy comfort and thinks that maybe, as much as he misses home sometimes, he’s found a bit of a home right where he is.


	9. in which grimmauld place is host to the annual gala and sirius should pay more attention

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so sorry this is late!!! i was having some writer's block. but it's up on the normal upload day, so at least there's that!
> 
> this one is very sacred twenty-eight, pureblood, sirius' family heavy, but it's also vague because he's eleven and doesn't pay very much attention to things. cut him some slack. he's an unreliable narrator. but this was a fun chapter to write :) let me know what you think!!
> 
> twitter - gryffsirius  
> instagram - emmakmarie  
> tumblr - siriusorioff  
> ko-fi - gryffsirius

Mid-December sweeps through Hogwarts with colder winds and more homework than anyone was anticipating, and before they know it, it’s almost time to go home for the holidays.

Remus goes home early, the Thursday before Christmas, shrugging off explanations of how he managed to convince the teachers that he gets to miss around two days of school every month – judging from how much he likes their classes, it doesn’t seem like this was his idea – and hugging each of the boys goodbye before heading off to Floo home from McGonagall’s office.

Sirius isn’t _exactly_ looking forward to heading home. It’s not like he doesn’t miss his family and his house and having his own room, but he doesn’t really feel up to having a conversation with his parents about his Sorting yet. He knows that they already kind of talked about it through letters, but if his mother’s past patterns of behavior have been anything to judge her future actions by, he can anticipate them sitting down and having a long discussion about his first year at Hogwarts so far.

He’s already gotten two detentions, which is two more than his parents would have liked, and he can tell from their tone in their letters that they’re looking forward to seeing him but are still reasonably irritated at how he’s chosen to act.

“I wish you could come home with me,” Sirius says on the train that Friday afternoon, lying across an entire bench in the compartment, his feet up against the window.

“Are you talking to me or to James?” Peter asks, tilting his head to the side so that he can actually meet Sirius' eyes.

“Both of you. Either. My mum and dad are probably going to lecture me, but they never do that in front of guests. Having one of you around would give me a little bit of a buffer.”

“Don’t you have a huge family? Won’t there be guests in the house? It’s Christmas,” James adds.

Sirius shrugs. “My cousins live in the manor house, they aren’t coming over until the Christmas Eve gala.”

“The what?”

“The manor house or the gala?”

“God, you’re so rich,” Peter says under his breath. James waves his statement aside carelessly.

“The _gala_ , no one has _galas_ , what are you talking about?”

“Did I… didn’t I say something about that?” Sirius swings himself into a sitting position, impatiently blowing his too-long hair out of his eyes as he does. “There’s a big Christmas Eve gala for the – the pureblood families club, I guess you could call it, and my mum likes to host it. I don’t know why we’re doing it at our house, it’s smaller than the manor, but she’s really into showing off how she renovated it or something.”

“Why wasn’t I invited? I’m a pureblood.”

“I don’t know, I’ve never seen the guest list.”

“It’s probably because you’re new money, James,” Peter says casually, opening a Chocolate Frog. “Sirius' family is old money, like, really old money.”

Sirius frowns. “No, we aren’t, what does that even mean?”

“What’s your dad’s job?”

There’s a pause. “I… don’t know,” Sirius finally manages.

“I rest my case,” Peter says definitively. “Old money. I’m pretty sure all of the old pureblood families’ jobs are just like, being rich.”

“How do you even know all of this?” James asks, a bit incredulously.

“My mum’s a historian, she’s writing a book about wizarding history and society in the last century.”

“I thought your mum was a farmer?”

“I have two mums, James, sometimes that happens.”

Sirius doesn’t say anything for a while. Honestly, he’d never thought about it like that before. Everyone he’d known growing up had been the same as his family. He supposes that makes sense, given that his mother’s social circle is tightly knit and seemingly very exclusive – he’s tagged along to enough of her events to make note of seeing the same faces, hearing the same tired conversation, over and over and over again. “I still wish one of you could come with me,” he says absently, circling back to the beginning of the conversation.

“Me too, mate,” James replies. “I think it would be so cool to get into a fancy party like that.”

By midafternoon, the train has pulled into Kings Cross and everyone clambers off, the three boys hovering near the train for a moment before moving apart.

“So, I guess this is goodbye,” James says, somewhat dramatically. “I’m going to miss the two of you more and more every day that we’re apart.”

“Ew, why are you talking like that, we’ll see you in two weeks,” Peter replies, giggling through his words and dodging James’ outstretched arms. “I’m not hugging you, you’re being weird!”

“I am _not_ , you’re being weird for not hugging me back!”

As Peter ducks around him to get away from James, Sirius catches sight of his father about ten feet away. “I have to go, I see my dad, can I just – Pete, stop _moving_ , I want to say goodbye to you –”

It takes him a solid ten seconds, but he finally manages to grab both of his friends in a hug and tell them that he’ll miss them.

“Aw, he’ll _miss_ us,” Peter says to James, who laughs and hugs Sirius again before they part ways.

Sirius knows that he’s only been at school for a few months, but it already feels weird to only say goodbye to two of his friends at once. He wonders how Remus is doing.

His mother notices him making his way over to them before his father does, and Sirius feels warm in his stomach at the way her face lights up when she first sees him. She grabs his father’s arm and turns him a little so that he can see as well, and as Sirius reaches his family, she pulls him into a crushing hug.

“I missed you, my darling boy,” his mother says as she holds him close, and he didn’t realize he missed her too until just now. She smells like orchids and magic and home and Sirius shuts his eyes for a second and feels like he’s about four again.

“I missed you too, Mum,” he manages, and she lets go.

“Sirius,” his father says in lieu of greeting when Sirius has stepped back completely from his mother’s embrace. “Getting into trouble at school, were we?”

“No,” Sirius replies, a bit defensively, and his father raises his eyebrows.

“Those letters telling us about your detentions say otherwise.”

“Orion,” his mother interrupts, her tone laced with an undercurrent of sharpness. “Shall we save this conversation for home?” It isn’t a question.

Like many other wizarding families, Sirius' parents have never deigned to use Muggle transportation, and the lines for the Floo at Platform 9 ¾ are far too long for their liking, so his mother holds onto his hand for a moment and Apparates back home. After a brief moment of discomfort, Sirius reopens his eyes and finds himself in the hallway of their house, and his first thought is that he thinks there should be more windows.

His second thought is of his brother. “Where’s Regulus?” he asks, finally noticing that his younger brother hadn’t come with his parents to the train station.

“Oh, he wasn’t feeling well, so he stayed home. Kreacher’s taking care of him,” his mother replies breezily.

That’s that for a while. Everyone kind of disperses, as usual when they’re at home, and Sirius goes upstairs and pokes his head into Regulus’ room for a minute. He ducks back out upon realizing that his brother is asleep and spends the rest of the afternoon in a bedroom that is all his but is far too quiet.

Sirius didn’t think that he would miss his friends this much, this quickly, but he’s realizing that he got used to being around them all the time, and that in comparison to the way things are at school, home is almost uncomfortably quiet. The one time that they all spend together is dinner, when they sit around the big dining table and have a meal together and make small talk about their days.

This tends to be difficult, considering that Sirius' father isn’t a very talkative man, and as much as his mother tries to have conversations that include the whole family, it’s usually pretty one-sided. Tonight, Regulus stays in his room and has a tray brought up to him, so it’s just Sirius and his parents at a table that’s far too big for the amount of people sitting at it.

To his immense relief, his father doesn’t bring up the Sorting or the detentions or anything at all. Sirius gets asked a few questions about what he likes best about school, has he made any friends, why he takes so long to answer letters, et cetera. He’s just grateful that it isn’t a _big_ family dinner, which would mean that they’d have to either have guests or make the trip to the manor house to spend the evening with his mother’s brother Cygnus’ family.

“Oh, by the way,” his mother says, as if she’d read his mind, “we’re postponing the weekend family dinner.”

“Are we?” his father replies. He’s reading a book at the table. Sirius can’t see what the title is, but he assumes it must be interesting enough that it makes him ignore his family. “Whose idea was that?”

“Mine and Alphard’s. We’re doing a lot of family things next week, we wanted to give everyone a chance to prepare.”

“Alphard just doesn’t want to have to spend any more time with Cygnus than he has to, and this is a weak excuse.”

“Orion, _none_ of us want to spend any more time with Cygnus than we have to, but we’re all doing it anyway.”

Sirius snorts at that, meeting his mother’s eyes from across the table, and she smiles a little bit.

They finish dinner and Sirius tiptoes into the parlor to play the piano after the table has been cleared and his father has decided to retire to his office. His mother almost follows him but stops at the door as he sits down on the bench. “You won’t stay up too late, will you?”

“No, Mum, I’m tired, I got up early today.”

“Alright,” she says, then steps into the room swiftly to drop a kiss on his head. “It’s good to have you home again, my shining star.” She pauses to try and smooth out his hair, which has become increasingly unruly in the time that he’s been away.

“Mum, leave it alone, please, it’s fine,” he complains, wriggling out of her reach and scooting down the length of the bench.

“You need a haircut. Goodnight, my love,” she says before leaving the room.

The week preceding Christmas passes in much the same manner; quiet days and family dinners and Sirius trying – for once – to work on his assignments that are due when he gets back so that he doesn’t have to finish them at the last minute. As much as he misses his friends, he thinks that maybe he’s better at getting his work done without them around. Especially James, though he thinks he might miss James the most.

Christmas Eve comes around, the days leading up to it a flurry of activity. His mother’s friends are in the house constantly, bringing their house elves and ideas and lists of things that need to be done before the gala. The morning of Christmas Eve Sirius wakes up and there are tiny floating glass bulbs all around the downstairs, illuminating the halls and making everything glow with a rosy light. When he takes a closer look at them, he notices that each little bulb has a fairy inside it.

“Mum?” he asks as he wanders through the house looking for her. It’s relatively early still, and yet he can hear a bustle of activity coming from the kitchen.

“In here,” her voice calls faintly, and he pushes open the kitchen door to see the large stone table filled with a wide variety of work stations, from hors d’oeuvres being assembled on platters to presents being wrapped to décor for the rest of the house being put together. “Good morning, darling, how did you sleep.”

Sirius shrugs. “It was okay. Can the fairies breathe in the glass things?”

There’s a ripple of light laughter around the room after he says it, coming from the witches that are sitting around the table who his mother had roped into helping prepare for the event. He can feel his cheeks burning a little at that, but he tries to ignore it.

“Of course, they can, there’s plenty of room for air to get in," his mother replies, turning her attention back to the fully wrapped present in front of her. She taps it with her wand and a large bow ties itself delicately on the front. “After all, we wouldn’t want our lights to go out, would we?”

“No, I guess not,” Sirius says, but still feels a little unconvinced.

His mother seems to notice that he’s a little uneasy, and changes the subject, saying, “How’s this, my love, you help me to decorate these presents? I’ll show you how to tie a bow using a spell.”

“Really?”

“Yes, of course, go get your wand.”

Sirius runs upstairs, making far too much noise for the morning, passing his father’s office – the door of which is tightly closed, yet he can still hear a rumble of somber voices coming from behind it – and swinging wildly into his own room to grab his wand from his bedside table before thundering down the stairs once again. He spends the early afternoon sitting with his mother in the kitchen, not really listening to the gossip floating around the table or recognizing many of the names, tying bows and putting gifts under the tree. It’s about three in the afternoon when he’s told to go back upstairs so that he can get changed before the party starts, and he helps Regulus tie his tie before they hear guests start to arrive and make their way back downstairs.

Sirius has never been much for being interested in these kinds of events. It’s always the same: he gets ready, his mother spends ten minutes trying to get his hair to cooperate, the guests arrive, he has to act like he knows all of them when he has no idea who most of them are, his father talks business (what exactly that business is, Sirius has no idea) with a group of stern-looking men in his office about halfway through the night, dinner is served on platters circling around the room, Sirius has to make the rounds with his mother while she shows him off to people, and finally, he and Regulus can escape with some of their cousins to somewhere else in the house to hide out for the rest of the night.

Tonight, however, things seem to be going a little differently. Not much, just enough that Sirius notices the changes. “I need you to perfect tonight, do you understand?” his mother says as she’s fussing with his collar and the doorbell rings downstairs. She seems more nervous about this year’s gala than Sirius has seen her in the past, and he wonders if that has to do with him.

It can’t, right? Surely his Sorting wouldn’t have that much of an effect on the family.

“Yes,” he says instead of asking more questions, and she smiles at him before tucking one of his curls behind his ear and heading downstairs to greet the guests.

The night is, for the most part, the same as Sirius had been predicting, with the only noticeable shift being in his mother’s demeanor. She keeps a closer eye on him than normal, asking him questions about school specifically for him to answer in front of other people, and it takes him far longer than he’s used to escape to the library upstairs, where the rest of the kids are waiting.

This year, it’s a largely unremarkable group, and Sirius makes a beeline for the armchair, where his cousin Andromeda is reading to Regulus, who’s almost falling asleep while sitting in her lap, even though he’s too big for it.

“Hey,” Narcissa says as he approaches, patting the floor next to her so that he has a place to sit. “How was it, being paraded around?”

Sirius makes a face before answering, “I don’t know, it was okay, I guess. I think I’m more interesting now that I’m in school or something.”

“You’re not interesting,” Regulus says softly.

“That hurt.”

“Good.”

“Don’t be mean,” Andromeda says mildly, stopping her reading. “What’s this about?”

Regulus shrugs. Sirius says, “He’s mad because I left for school and so he hasn’t been talking much to me since I came back.”

“You know you’re going to school in two years, right, Reg? You’ll be there, too.”

“I just don’t like being by myself,” he says. Sirius tries not to feel bad.

“Where’s Bella?” he asks, changing the subject.

Andromeda frowns and sets her book aside. “She’s mingling. You heard she got engaged, right?”

“No, when was that?”

“Over the summer. To Rodolphus Lestrange. It’s all very formal, I think Mum and Dad set it up. Anyway, she’s being an adult.”

“ _You’re_ an adult too, Andromeda.”

“Look, Cissy, I’m eighteen, I’m only _technically_ an adult. Bella’s talking to…” Andromeda trails off, seeming to register that Sirius and Regulus are listening, and continues, “…fancy people.”

“It’s a fancy party,” Sirius says, picking at a loose string on the rug. “They’re all fancy people.”

“Yes, well,” Andromeda says tightly, “these people aren’t very nice.”

“Oh.”

“Andromeda,” Narcissa says, in an almost disapproving tone. “We should be supportive.”

Andromeda snorts. “Yeah, sure, I’ll be supportive when –” She stops herself again. “Do you think you boys could go track down some food? I always feel like I’m intruding if I go into the kitchen.”

Sirius is fully aware that she wants them to leave so that she can talk about something she thinks he’s too young to hear with Narcissa, but he nods and stands anyway, pulling Regulus with him.

It’s on their way back from the kitchen, their arms laden with a plate each of finger sandwiches, that Sirius' eye is caught by the door to his father’s office being slightly open.

“What are you doing?” Regulus asks as his brother stops, looking inside. “Dad says we’re not supposed to go in.”

“I just want to see what they’re talking about, shh,” Sirius replies, and Regulus slows. “Keep going, I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”

“Okay,” Regulus replies hesitantly, and continues down the hall to the library.

Peering into the crack in the door, Sirius sees his father standing with his back to the door, standing with a surprisingly small group of men. He thinks he recognizes a few of them – his uncle Cygnus, Abraxas Malfoy, someone who he thinks is named Rosier – but doesn’t know the rest.

His father is saying, “Yes, of course his methods are extreme, but are his principles correct? Yes, again. He’s doing what needs to be done. Not that I condone rushing out and joining this kind of uncivilized group, but if he were to run for Minister and do things the proper way, he could count on my vote.”

“That’s not all he’s looking for, though,” a voice that Sirius almost recognizes says, and Sirius narrows his eyes. “Orion, he’s looking for more stalwart approval, and a man in your position would be able to sway the events to work in his favor. You have to see the merit in this.”

There’s a murmuring from the group. Sirius can’t see who the speaker was.

“I _do_ see the merit, I just can’t be actively involved. Especially, as you said, as a man in my position. Walburga would agree.”

“Are you going to tell her about this?”

“She’s my wife, I have to.”

“Well, you don’t _have_ to.”

“If I don’t, she’ll find out on her own, and it’ll be that much more unpleasant.” Sirius hears what he thinks are the sounds of his father pouring himself another drink.

There’s a pause, and then the voice that Sirius almost recognizes says, “Look, I don’t mean to press the issue, you just need to consider –”

“I _have_ considered, now drop it, Bratum! I’ll _tell_ you when I’m ready to do something about it. Now, as the situation is, what I need from you is to keep me updated.”

“On what?”

“On what your master needs from me, specifically, that doesn’t require me dressing up in a ridiculous mask and incriminating myself, and on how my son is doing in your class.”

Sirius nearly drops the plate of finger sandwiches at the mention of Bratum’s name, and immediately realizes where he’s heard the voice before. Stupid, stupid, how didn’t he recognize it right away? He should know what his Defense Against the Dark Arts professor’s voice sounds like.

He stops listening to what they’re saying, and a small part of him thinks that maybe he should stay and continue eavesdropping, but the fact that Bratum is _here_ , in his house, having some sort of intense conversation with his father, is enough to make his brain stop processing things normally. There’s too much.

Sirius doesn’t go back to the library, but instead goes to his room and writes a letter to his friends, to send before he forgets what the fuck just happened.


	10. in which everyone bickers at the train station

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi i took a week off from posting because i was having mad writer's block, but here's a new chapter! hopefully it's not Awful ;) 
> 
> twitter - gryffsirius  
> instagram - emmakmarie  
> tumblr - siriusorioff  
> ko-fi - gryffsirius

“Hey, fucker!”

Peter thinks it says something about him that he actually turned around at that, but he has an excuse – that’s Remus' voice calling out to him from across the crowded train station. “Hey!” Peter replies, waving at his friend and ignoring the disapproving looks from various parents.

After a few moments of struggle, they manage to reach each other, Peter wiggling through the crowd and leaving his parents in the dust until he gets to Remus, who’s only managed to make it about two feet from his original position. “Nice to see you,” Remus says in a nonchalant tone as Peter squeezes between two sixth years.

“You too,” Peter replies in the same tone, but both of them are trying not to laugh at this point. There’s something in the tone of their conversation that feels like they’re trying to act like adults, and to continue the charade, Peter extends his hand formally for Remus to shake.

Remus snorts a little but takes it. “Why are you shaking hands?” comes a voice from the right. Turning, Peter sees James, approaching them while lugging a bag that’s far larger than the one he left with.

“Why do _you_ have a bag large enough to fit inside?”

James glances down at it, grimacing. “My mum made me bring more clothes, she says that I didn’t pack any winter wear.”

“What kind of winter wear does she think you’ll need, we’re inside most of the time.”

“I don’t know, _Remus_ , some of us like to venture into the fresh air every once and a while.”

“Oh, nice, that was wicked,” Sirius says, approaching the group from out of nowhere.

Remus throws his hands in the air. “It wasn’t even funny! All our classes are in the same building, except for Herbology! Why would I go outside if it’s cold and I don’t have to?”

“Hello to you too,” Sirius replies, looking like he’s trying not to laugh. “Why are we all standing on the platform when the train is right there?”

“Oh,” Peter says, looking around. “Wait, I have to say goodbye to my mums first, hold on.” He starts to head over to where he left them, but doubles back to grab James’ arm, as he was the closest out of his friends, adding, “Come with me, you can meet my parents.”

“What, just James? I’m offended, Pete.”

“Sirius, you idiot, I meant all of you, I only have two hands.”

“Who’s going to hold _my_ hand, then? Remus, will you hold my hand? You’re the only one left.”

“Just for that, absolutely not.”

Peter fights his way back through the crowd to see his mothers standing by a pillar a little bit away, and James makes a little noise of recognition upon nearing their position. “What?” Peter asks him, and James points with his free hand.

“Look, those are my parents.”

Behind them, Peter hears Remus say in a slightly raised voice, “Mum, Dad, what are you doing, I thought you left already.”

A man who Peter can only assume is Remus' dad replies, “Oh, we found your friends’ parents, we’re talking shit about all of you.”

“Thanks,” Remus says flatly as the four of them reach the knot of parents.

“Are my parents the only ones not in the little party over here? I’m insulted,” Sirius says, looking around. “If anyone sees a man in a suit and a woman who looks remarkably like me but, you know, a woman, let me know.”

“Isn’t that just what we see every time you stand next to Flitwick?”

“Fuck off, Remus,” Sirius rushes out under his breath before they reach everyone’s parents and he says, in a normal tone, “Hello, I’m Sirius Black, it’s very nice and not at all overwhelming to meet all of you at once.”

Peter snorts. “Okay, these are my mums, Enid and Matilda,” he says, gesturing to each of them in turn.

James raises his hand. “Why are you raising your hand, you’re not in class,” a man who looks like an old version of James asks.

James shrugs. “It seemed polite. Which one of you is the historian and which one is the farmer?” he asks, directing his attention to Peter’s parents.

“I’m the farmer,” his mother says. In response to James’ blank look, she adds, “I’m Enid. I know, it’s confusing, I should’ve worn a name tag.”

“Do you have a dog?” Sirius asks, completely unprompted.

“I told you this on the train, Sirius, remember, his name is Domino.”

“Oh _yeah_ , can I meet him someday?”

“Do I get to introduce my parents yet?” Remus interrupts, and Sirius frowns at him. “Don’t give me that look. This is my mum, Hope, and my dad, Lyall.”

“You’re tall,” James says.

“Thank you,” Remus' dad replies. The train whistles. “Fuck,” he continues, “you boys need to get on the train.”

“Okay, but my parents are Fleamont and Euphemia, there, I got it in before we got interrupted again.”

“Everyone _knows_ who your parents are, James, you talk about them all the time!”

“Yeah, your mum sent me chocolates for my _birthday_ , thank you for that, by the way, Mrs. Potter, you’re an angel,” Sirius adds.

“Oh, you’re welcome, dear. It was the least I could do, I just wanted to make sure you had a little something extra,” she adds, and Peter thinks that Sirius might look a little embarrassed by the attention, but he’s hiding it well.

“Okay, hugs all around, you need to go,” James’ dad says, reaching out and pulling his son into an embrace. Sirius stands by himself for a minute before Remus' mum approaches him while everyone else is occupied and asks him if he wants a hug as well.

Everyone’s separated from their parents but Sirius is still being hugged by Remus' mum when the whistle blows again. “Mum, let him go, we’re gonna get a shit compartment if we don’t move,” Remus says, tugging Sirius out of his mother’s grip.

“Thank you for that,” Sirius says, readjusting his bag on his shoulder and backing away.

“Watch your language, Remus,” his mother says, pointing at him. “All of you, take care of each other, make good choices!”

They’re halfway on the train when Peter hears James’ mother call, “James! You forgot your bag of winter wear!”

“I did that on purpose, Mum!” James shouts back, hanging out of the door of the train, waving wildly. “I’ll see you for Easter!”

“I’m sending this bag to you, you can’t not have warm clothing!”

“I won’t wear it! I love you!”

“James, _move_ , Remus and I still need to get on the train,” Peter says, pushing James further onto the train so that he stops having a shouted conversation with his mother. They make it into the hallway half a minute before the train starts moving and set about finding a compartment.

Most unfortunately, there seem to be approximately zero empty compartments, and they end up lingering outside the one currently holding the girls from their year.

“There are too many people in there for us to actually go in, right?” Peter asks, eyeing the minimal space. “Look, Dorcas’ cat takes up an entire seat.”

“Her cat can sit on someone’s lap, we’re friends, we should be allowed to sit with them,” Sirius replies easily, opening the door without knocking and saying, “Hi, what’s up, how was your break, can we sit here?”

“No,” Lily says, but Sirius is already walking in.

“Thanks, Evans, you’re a doll. Dorcas, can I move your cat?”

The girls reluctantly scoot closer to the windows so that they can fit as many of them into the compartment as possible, and to save space, Peter ends up ultimately deciding to sit on the floor under the window.

“Pete, there’s room for you right here,” James says, squeezed between Marlene and Remus.

“No, there really isn’t,” Remus argues. “James is using my leg as an armrest, these seats weren’t meant for so many people.”

“I meant in my _lap_ , Remus, where did you think I was talking about?”

“You know, you’d think it would be easier for us to fit in here, there’s only eight of us and these compartments were built for four.”

“Mary, that’s _twice_ the amount of people that are supposed to be in here, and you think we’re supposed to be able to fit easily? It’s lucky that I didn’t end up inviting Severus to sit with us, he said he was going to sit with some of his friends from his House, so at least we have another seat.”

“Oh, gross, Evans, you really wanted to let Snape sit with us? He’s the _worst_.”

“Shut up, Potter, I didn’t ask how you felt about him, we didn’t even invite _you_ in, Black just shoved his way in.”

“Look, Lily, I was just saying that we should fit two people per seat, and there’s a little gap in between each seat, so we should be okay. We aren’t that big, we’re first years.”

“Hey, Remus,” Sirius interjects, completely off topic, “did you get the letter I wrote? On Christmas Eve?”

“What letter?”

“What do you _mean_ , what letter? I wrote to all of you.”

“Aw, you wrote to _all_ of us? Thanks, Sirius, that means so much.”

“Not _you_ , Marlene, I wrote to Remus and Peter and James.”

“Why was I listed _last_?”

“Alphabetically, you have the last surname.”

“Okay, I _know_ you just made that up, but I didn’t get the letter either. Honestly, I was a little offended that I didn’t get anything from you at all over the break, but I managed not to completely fall apart at that.”

Sirius frowns. “What was it about?” Peter asks, craning his neck up from his position on the floor. The cat has settled into his lap and he feels like a Bond villain as he scratches it behind the ears.

“Oh, I –” Sirius seems to realize for the first time that he’s not alone in a compartment with his best friends, stuttering out lamely, “I’ll tell you later.”

Remus laughs. “Smooth.” Sirius throws his wand at him.

They make it back to Hogwarts without much more happening, even though Peter’s slightly irritated at getting kicked multiple times from his position on the floor, but to be fair, he did choose to sit there. He has to explain to James what a Bond villain is after he referenced it in conversation, and that led to a discussion about who would be what role in a Bond movie (it’s ultimately decided that Marlene would be the titular character).

After a hasty dinner in the Great Hall, the four of them head back to Gryffindor Tower, having gotten the new password from a passing prefect, and head up to their room to settle back in.

Peter’s noticed that Sirius has been relatively quiet since finding out that none of his friends had gotten the letters he sent them and knows that he’s been waiting until it’s just the four of them to talk about what happened, so he doesn’t say anything.

James throws himself onto his bed, saying to the ceiling, “I can’t _believe_ my mum tried to make me take an entire wardrobe full of winter clothes, basically –”

He’s cut off by Sirius rushing out, “Bratum was at my house on Christmas Eve.”

“ _What_?” Peter asks sharply, turning from where he’s been unpacking his bag on his bed as James sits up quickly.

“Was that in the letter you sent us? What was he _doing_ there?” Remus says in the same tone, his brows furrowed.

“I don’t know,” Sirius replies, shrugging. “I guess I got distracted and forgot to actually send the letters, but I wanted to tell you about it right when it happened.”

“Okay, but what _did_ happen?”

The four of them sit on the floor in a circle, and Sirius tells them about the fancy party and all of the people who were there and how his father always seems to have a business meeting going on in his office and how this time he left his door open a little and Sirius heard some strange things.

“Who do you think he was talking about?” James asks in a hushed tone.

“Who do you _think_ , James, he was talking about You-Know-Who,” Peter replies. “Read a newspaper, Jesus.”

“Sirius, do you think –” Remus begins, but stops himself. “Never mind.”

“What were you going to say?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

“Remus, come on, I’ve spent enough time trying to figure it out on my own so believe me, I’ve probably already thought about whatever it is you’re trying to say.”

Remus pauses, then says, “Look, your dad said that he – that he _believed_ in what You-Know-Who was doing, but that he wasn’t going to join him, so like. I don’t know, what do you think that means?”

Sirius doesn’t answer for a minute, looking down at his lap and picking at the rug they’re sitting on. “I don’t know, probably that he isn’t a very good person.”

The other three look at him for a moment. Sirius doesn’t stop his rug-destroying motions. Peter doesn’t know what to say. How do you go about talking to someone who’s in the process of figuring out that his parents might not be the kind of people that you want to grow up to be like? _Especially_ Sirius, who’s had the whole idea of family being extremely important drilled into him practically since birth. Peter doesn’t know if Sirius sees it that way, but that’s definitely the impression that he gets from his family. Everyone knows the Black family are basically wizarding royalty, and that their strictness on the purity of blood goes very deep. Well, everyone except Sirius, apparently, who seems to be just figuring out that the parties his parents host don’t have the most wholesome of guest lists.

“Are you okay?” James asks quietly after a moment.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Sirius says, finally looking up. “Look, I’m not going to just – just run with the assumption that everyone I knew before school is fucking awful, but I can’t rule it out. I’m not an idiot, I’ve listened to enough of my parent’s conversations at dinners to know what they’re talking about, but I always thought they were, I don’t know, more quiet about it?”

“That’s not necessarily better, Sirius.”

“I _know_ , but it made me feel better, you know?” He sighs. “We should get to the bottom of it, though.”

“We don’t even have any proof,” Remus says, reaching for a piece of parchment and a quill. “Let’s say that Bratum _is_ a Death Eater. On the off chance that that’s true –”

“Remus, I heard what I heard, he wanted my dad to join You-Know-Who’s followers –”

“I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but we have to be sure. We need proof. He can’t be here if he’s a Death Eater, and we can’t get him out without proof.”

“Why don’t we just tell Dumbledore what Sirius heard at his house?”

“You think he’ll believe us? We’re _first years_ , they don’t care what we have to say.”

“Okay, then,” Peter says. “How do we get proof?”

There’s a pause. Then James announces, “I’m prepared to sacrifice myself for the good of the group. Lads, I’m going to get a series of detentions with Bratum.”

Sirius snorts. “How are you going to manage that?”

“What, do you want me to give away all my secrets? You’ll just have to stay tuned,” James says, giving the finger guns to no one in particular.

“Who are you even looking at?” Remus asks. James rotates his finger guns to each of them in turn as though he’s signing off from a TV show. “Okay, good luck with that.”

“Thank you, we appreciate your service,” Peter adds.

“You’re a gem, Pete. Now, to plot my demise in Defense Against the Dark Arts.” James pulls the parchment and quill out of Remus' hands and starts to write.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've had multiple people asking me why they curse so much so ,, here's your explanation ,, it's because lyall lupin can't stop swearing ,, also they're eleven and twelve ,, kids those ages swear a Lot ,, ;) thank u


	11. in which the marauders all share a single brain cell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey i am SO sorry for the lack of uploads, i have no excuse, like the marauders i only have one brain cell. HOWEVER i am currently on vacation so i have two weeks off and lots of time for writing!! this is a short chapter, but i will be uploading another (longer) chapter tomorrow :) thank you for all the support and for being so patient with me. kudos and comments are, as always, the reason i am alive ;)
> 
> twitter - gryffsirius  
> instagram - emmakmarie  
> tumblr - siriusorioff  
> ko-fi - gryffsirius

To pretty much no one’s surprise, it takes James far longer than he was boasting to get anywhere near consecutive detentions.

“Watch,” he’d said after making a list of possible shenanigans that could result in being locked in a room with Bratum for multiple hours, “I’ll have this handled by the weekend.”

“Don’t you think you could just, I don’t know, tell him he’s ugly or something?”

“Pete, when has that ever worked? I don’t think it’s enough to get multiple detentions.”

“I’m fairly certain that if you were any good at investigating, you wouldn’t even _need_ multiple detentions,” Remus had chimed in.

James had gestured dramatically at his surprisingly long list, saying, “Look, Remus, just – let me do this, okay? I have a list, one of these will work.”

“Five Galleons says none of them do,” Sirius had said from the floor, and James had kicked him.

Three weeks have passed, and Remus is unsurprised that James has failed in all of his attempts so far. They’ve mainly just consisted of being a slight nuisance in class, which isn’t that big of a difference than James’ normal actions, so Bratum has just been marginally more irritated with him than he was before.

“I don’t understand why none of these absolutely _flawless_ attempts are _working,_ ” James complains upon leaving Defense Against the Dark Arts on Thursday, Bratum sweeping past them in the hall to head to the teacher’s lounge for the ten minute break between this and the next class. Remus isn’t exactly sure why he’d put in the effort to go all the way there when he has a perfectly good desk inside his office, but who is he to judge? “I’ve put a lot of thought into this, how haven’t I gotten thrown in detention yet?”

“A lot of thought?” Peter replies, tilting his head to one side and scrunching his nose in skepticism. “Really? Be honest with yourself, James.”

“Okay, fine, maybe not a _lot_ of thought, but look, most of the time my spur-of-the-moment plans work pretty well, so I don’t see why this one isn’t.”

“Hey, uh, not to poke a hole in _that_ theory, but wasn’t your last spur-of-the-moment plan to go practice flying tricks before Quidditch trials, during which, I don’t really remember, I accidentally _broke your leg_?”

James brushes that aside. “Details,” he says, prompting a snort from Sirius. “The point is that I had a plan, we did it, and the end goal was to get us noticed, which certainly happened.”

“You also got all first years banned from owning their own brooms for the rest of the foreseeable future, so I’m not sure if that’s a win,” Remus adds, then looks around the corner. “Anyway, seeing as we’re still standing outside the DADA classroom and Bratum’s gone, James, why don’t you do something spur-of-the-moment with that?”

James looks at him blankly. “What?”

“I’m not putting it together for you, you’re smart, you figure it out.”

“Smart?” Peter says under his breath to Sirius, who snickers.

“Shut up,” James says, looking down in thought. Approximately four seconds later, he looks up again, exclaiming, “Oh!” and darting into the classroom.

“And he didn’t even give us any exposition,” Sirius says, as though to a nonexistent camera. “I suppose we’ll just have to follow him and see what he does.”

“This is like a nature documentary.”

“What’s a documentary?”

“God, what’s it like living in the Dark Ages and having absolutely no concept of the outside world?”

They find James inside the classroom, meticulously picking the lock to Bratum’s office. “You know there’s a spell for that,” Remus calls up the stairs, and James flips him off without turning around.

“I prefer the nitty gritty,” James replies, and there’s a clicking sound as the door unlocks, creaking open slightly. “A- _ha_ ,” he says triumphantly, turning around and peering down the stairs at his friends. “Come on, someone come with me.”

“No one is going _anywhere_ ,” comes a booming voice from the doorway. The boys turn so fast to follow the sound that Remus thinks he’s given himself whiplash.

Somewhat anticlimactically, Bratum is standing in the door, an attempt at a thunderous expression on his face. Remus thinks it would be much more effective if he had a scarier face, but the effect is currently just making him look somewhat pompously constipated. “Oh,” James says brightly from the top of the stairs, a sunny smile on his face as though he’s never even had a vague thought about wrongdoing, “Nice to see you, Professor, how are you doing?”

“Potter, _what_ are you doing opening the door of my office?” Bratum’s voice is considerably sharper than his expression, and Remus tightens his jaw a little just from hearing it, edging a little out of his line of vision, Peter and Sirius doing the same. “I didn’t think I needed to emphasize this to children who seem to have a modicum of basic intelligence, but a teacher’s office is restricted from students unless they are explicitly invited in, and you most certainly have _not_ been.”

“I dunno, sir, I just wanted to see what was inside,” James replies, skipping down the stairs. “Everyone has secrets.”

Bratum bristles. “What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

James shrugs. “I’m inquisitive. My mum says it’s a valuable trait.”

“In the world of academia, yes, but when concerning the privacy of others, it most certainly is _not_.” Bratum shakes his head. “I don’t understand what made you think that this was acceptable.” Seeming to notice the other boys for the first time, Bratum directs the next question specifically to Sirius, who squirms under the scrutiny. “Why didn’t you stop him?”

“I, uh,” Sirius begins in an unsuccessful attempt to talk his way out of the situation.

“We tried, Professor,” Peter interjects helpfully, and Sirius visibly relaxes as soon as he does. “Didn’t you hear us when you came in? James was trying to get us to explore your office with him, but we said no, it wasn’t right.”

“Wow, thanks, Pete, good to know that I can count on your silence,” James replies sarcastically.

“Anything for you, James,” Peter replies, and Remus can hear him trying to stifle a laugh as he speaks.

“Enough,” Bratum snaps, cutting through their dialogue. “I really have heard enough. Potter, you’ve earned yourself a month’s worth of detentions, every Wednesday night for four weeks. I’ll be writing a letter home to your parents as well, and you can be sure that you’ll receive a stern talking-to from Professor McGonagall after I’ve had a conversation with her. Now get out of my sight, I don’t want to see you for the rest of the day.”

“Okay, sir,” James replies, far too much cheer in his voice, and the four of them scurry out of the classroom, leaving Bratum standing at the foot of the stone staircase leading up to his office, looking a mix of angry and bewildered.

“Well,” Peter says breathlessly as the bell rings and they jog through the halls to get to History of Magic before they’re too late, “that went as well as we could have expected, didn’t it?”

“God, I hate running,” Sirius wheezes, clutching at his chest. “Why didn’t we get out of there sooner?”

“We’re all in Bratum’s class, Sirius, you should know as well as the rest of us do that he never fucking shuts up.”

“You know, you’re right, Remus, I really thought he was just going to throw me a bunch of detentions and tell me to fuck right off, I didn’t think he was going to try and get to the bottom of my motives and everything right there. Thought he’d at least wait until I was cornered in his classroom and had no way to escape.”

“ _I_ really thought that you’d have a better reason for trying to break into his office,” Peter replies, raising his voice a little so that James can hear him. He’s jogging slightly ahead of everyone, and Remus almost resents him for his easy athleticism. “What was up with _everyone has secrets_ , James, seriously?”

“Siriusly?” Sirius asks, laughing.

“Shut up.”

 


	12. in which james introduces an old family favorite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as promised, a new chapter, one day after the last one, to make up for my lack of posting. i love u all thank you for the support <3

“Hey, what do you think I should get Lily for Valentine’s?”

“A restraining order, since she clearly hates you.”

“Thank you so much for the valuable input, Remus.”

James is lying on his stomach in front of the fire in the common room, his feet in the air, making a list of possible ideas on the scroll of parchment in front of him. As of right now, it reads _~~chocolates~~_ , _~~flowers~~_ , _~~singing house elves~~_ , and _~~poetry collection~~_. Sirius reaches over, steals his quill, and scrawls _restraining order_ on the bottom of the list, drawing lopsided hearts rather than dotting the i’s.

“I dunno, James, nothing attracts a woman more than being as far away from a man as is physically possible.”

“What do you know about attracting women?”

Sirius blushes slightly, but to his credit, manages to say, “I mean, have you seen me?” which earns him a laugh from Peter.

Valentine’s Day is rapidly approaching, next Monday looming ever nearer as the minutes tick by on the clock, and James has absolutely no idea what he wants to do for it. He thinks, logically, he shouldn’t even consider getting something for Lily, given that she isn’t his girlfriend and he doesn’t even think he _really_ likes her, but he still wants to. It doesn’t have to be big, it’s just something that he wants to do.

“Are we allowed to go to Hogsmeade yet?” James asks.

“Are you an idiot? No,” Peter replies. The clock strikes seven. “Don’t you have a detention?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s my last one,” James says, pushing himself off the floor and standing. “Where _does_ the time go?”

“Apparently into the trash, seeing as you’ve wasted three weeks already when you could’ve been using that time to figure out how to get evidence on Bratum,” Remus says.

James throws his hands in the air. “How am I supposed to snoop when he doesn’t leave me alone at all? He doesn’t even leave the room to take a piss, what am I supposed to do with that? I mean, at least he just lets me do my homework, but I literally can’t do anything more with him glaring at me for an hour.”

“Do you want me to come and distract him?” Sirius asks, not looking up from the octopus he’s doodling on the corner of his Charms essay. “I’m a great conversationalist.”

“I mean, if you think that’ll work?” James says skeptically. “He has that weird interest in you and your future, right? Because he knows your parents.”

“Yeah,” Sirius replies, grimacing.

Remus laughs at his scrunched-up features. “What’s with that face?”

“I’m just emotionally preparing myself to be talked at for at least fifteen minutes, depending on how much time I can buy for James. It is,” Sirius pauses to take a deep breath and snap his Charms textbook closed, “not gonna be pretty.”

“You know, in hindsight, it probably wasn’t a good idea to get caught and punished for doing the thing that the detentions were a ruse for,” James muses to no one in particular.

“As usual, relying on us to bail you out.”

“Shut up, Pete, I don’t see you doing anything to help me.”

“I was using the royal us in reference to Sirius.”

“The _royal us_? That isn’t a phrase!”

“How would you know? You don’t know anything about the Muggle world! Maybe they _do_ call it the royal us!”

“Wow, good luck with getting Bratum to do _anything_ , Sirius, if James is going to continue to be belligerent like this,” Remus says, cutting across Peter and James’ bickering.

“ _Me_?” James asks, shocked. “Pete started it!”

“I did not! I take offense to these blatant lies.”

“I’ll do my best,” Sirius replies to Remus, grabbing his Defense Against the Dark Arts book out of his bag and getting ready to head off towards the classroom with James. “Aren’t we late?”

“Oh, fuck,” James says, his heart sinking. “He’s not gonna want to cooperate, will he?”

“I dunno, maybe I’ll get him to work with me on this. We might get lucky,” Sirius replies optimistically, but James isn’t convinced.

The stone corridors are quiet, the only sounds the occasional fiery crackle from candles and hearths punctuated by the tapping of their shoes on the floor. Something about tonight makes James feel chilly and uncertain, and he’s worried about breathing too much for some reason, as though it’ll awaken something lurking around the corner, waiting to devour the two of them.

He knows that’s a stupid thing to think about, to even consider, but he thinks that Sirius might be feeling the same way, judging from how closely they’re walking together. James has the distinct impression that they’re about to walk into the lion’s den.

Bratum isn’t a particularly dangerous man at the moment, James knows this, but the possibility of finding evidence on him being even slightly involved in a group like the Death Eaters is enough to make his stomach turn. They haven’t really discussed what the next step is if they _do_ uncover proof of this; James assumes that they’d try and talk to Dumbledore, but who knows if they’d be believed? Who was going to take the word of a group of first years over an adult who’d clearly aced his interviews with the headmaster in order to get a job working with wizarding youth?

However, judging from the things that James has heard about DADA teachers in the past, it might not be that hard to get the position.

They come to the classroom four minutes after James was supposed to be there, and James grimaces before touching the door. “He’s gonna be a pain about me being late,” he says under his breath, just in case Bratum can hear them.

“It’s okay, you have me for backup,” Sirius replies casually, but still looks a bit daunted at the impending extremely one-sided conversation he’s to have with Bratum. “We can do this.”

“Can we?” James asks skeptically, pushing the door open. “Hello, Professor.”

“That’s a terrible attitude to have about it,” Sirius replies in a hushed tone before following James inside.

“Mr. Potter, you’re late,” Bratum says sharply from his desk, looking up as they enter. “Ah, and you brought a friend with you. Mr. Black, it’s usually not customary to come along for voluntary detentions, so what can I help you with today?”

“Well, sir,” Sirius begins, in an adulatory tone that makes James have to stifle a snicker, “I was having some trouble with some of the concepts that we’ve been working on in class, and especially how to apply them in real-world situations, you know, like you wanted us to think about in our essays? And I just thought that I could use some mentorship in this subject, if you’re available. I know James has to spend some time in here, but I was hoping that I could take some of that.”

“Oh,” Bratum says, sounding a little taken aback, but still pleased. “Of course, I would love to give you some help and advice. What seems to be the hardest part of the material for you?”

James, settling down at his desk and pulling out his homework, glances up and meets Sirius' eyes for a fraction of a second before the latter is speaking again.

“Actually, sir, I was hoping we could speak out in the hallway? I don’t want to distract James. I’m a firm believer that focus is a key element to moving past and learning from our mistakes, and if he doesn’t have that, then, well…” Sirius shrugs. James is amazed at how easily he’s adopted a slightly pretentious, easily haughty tone, one that sounds like it belongs at a fancy dinner populated only by rich purebloods. “Then I suppose he doesn’t have anything.”

“How generous of you. Of course, Sirius.” Bratum stands and heads out of the door with Sirius, making sure to leave it open a crack so that he can hear any activity inside. James makes a note to ask Sirius about where the _hell_ he learned how to do a high society voice like that before taking immediate advantage of Bratum’s absence and moving as quietly as he can towards the office.

He wishes he had a spell to make sure that no one could hear what was going on.

This time, as Bratum is only just outside the classroom, he hasn’t bothered to lock his office door, and James is exceedingly grateful that the door doesn’t creak loudly on its hinges as he gently pushes it open. He’s also grateful that the office is a mess, because the more disorganized Bratum is, the easier it’ll be for James to sneak something out without it being noticed.

James estimates that he still has at least ten minutes to comb through Bratum’s office, so his eye is immediately drawn to the wide, flat, locked drawer on the underside of the desk. It doesn’t seem particularly secure, but James assumes that Bratum has the mentality that since no one would even be in his office in the first place, there’s no real need to magically ward the lock. James isn’t sure how he can tell, exactly, that there isn’t any extra magical protection on the drawer; it might be something to do with the way he can sometimes almost sense enchantments, the way he felt the buzzing through his veins when he walked into Hogwarts for the first time, the way he can smell the sharp crackle of sorcery in the air of the Charms classroom after they learn something new. It’s something he thinks his sense are only attuned to because he’s spent his entire life surrounded by magic, so when it’s missing, he’s acutely aware of it.

This is one of those instances. Bratum’s drawer has no magic surrounding it whatsoever, so James reaches into his pocket and pulls out the tiny metal tools (stolen from his father’s clock repair kit, but he doubts that their absence has been noted yet) that he used the last time he picked a lock in this office. Within minutes, the drawer pops open and James peers inside.

It can’t be this easy, he thinks as he opens it fully, flicking through the papers and trying to put them back exactly as he found them, so as not to alert Bratum the next time he goes inside. However, something tells James that that might not be for a while, considering the stiffness of the drawer as he opened it. He’d be surprised if Bratum accessed this drawer more than once every two weeks. In any case, James is finding mostly junk, old notes scribbled on torn off corners of parchment, to-do lists, skeletal lesson plans with large chunks reserved for lectures. That is, at least, until he uncovers a large folder.

James just barely has time to open it up and skim the first page – a list of familiar names, some of which are marked with little stars or circles drawn around them – when he hears Sirius coughing from outside the classroom. It’s loud and exaggerated and exactly what James needed to hear to signal that he should get the fuck out of Bratum’s office and that Sirius can only buy him a few more seconds.

Proud of himself that he’d learned a spell to cover his tracks, James points his wand at the lock after shutting the drawer quietly, whispers, “ _Colloportus_ ,” and hears a squelching, sealing sound that he wasn’t expecting, but that he guesses will have to do. He tucks the folder under his shirt and darts out of the office, closing the door softly behind him and tiptoeing back to his seat before Sirius has even finished hacking up a lung.

The folder is safely in James’ bag and he’s studiously working on his History of Magic essay by the time Bratum and Sirius reenter the classroom, Bratum saying, “Well, I appreciate you coming to me, Sirius, and please let me know if you need any help in the future. Mr. Potter will rejoin you in your dorm in, what time is it… oh, half an hour? It’s the last detention, we can cut it short tonight, don’t you think?”

“Yes, sir,” James replies, unable to mask his grin. Bratum seems to think it’s due to his own generosity and returns it, unaware that James is brimming with excitement because of his successful heist. “I’ll see you later then, Sirius?” he continues, looking towards his friend.

Sirius raises his eyebrows in a question. James nods almost imperceptibly, and Sirius smiles a little, almost breaking character.

“Cool,” Sirius replies. “Thanks, Professor. Have fun, James.”

James can barely sit still for the rest of the detention and is immensely thankful to Sirius for buttering up Bratum enough that he’s willing to let James leave early. His fingers are itching to look at the folder. He can feel that it’s something important – why else would Bratum keep it in a locked drawer? What is there to hide about it?

He knows he’s going to be disappointed if it turns out there’s nothing of significance about his stolen bundle of papers, but his overwhelming feeling is the opposite.

The minutes tick by, and finally Bratum tells James that he can go, barely looking up from his scroll of parchment that he’s been dutifully scribbling on since he came back in from talking to Sirius in the hall. “Thanks, sir,” James says quickly, grabbing his bag and stuffing his books inside before taking off, nearly sprinting back to the dorm.

He bursts through the portrait hole, tripping on the step and stumbling as he comes to where his friends are sitting, Remus looking up as he approaches. “How did it –” Remus begins.

James cuts him off. “I got something,” he blurts, breathlessly, and Sirius and Peter pause in their game of Gobstones to pay attention.

“Thank god, we’ve been dying in anticipation since Sirius came back half an hour ago,” Peter says, focused solely on James. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” James replies. The common room is relatively empty, but still has enough people in it that he feels the urge to draw his friends in closer before delving into his bag and pulling out the folder. “I didn’t get a chance to look at it, not really, but it had students’ names in it, and notes about people, I think. It was in a locked drawer.”

“Are you sure it isn’t just, I don’t know, records of students’ grades?” Remus asks skeptically, reclining from his previously interested, leaning forward position. “I don’t know about you, James, but that seems like a pretty logical thing to keep inside a locked drawer in a teacher’s desk.”

“Shh,” Sirius replies, pushing Remus slightly. “Let him present the evidence. Go on, Jamie, tell us how it went, spin us a yarn and turn that into a tapestry.”

“Tapestries aren’t made from _yarn_ , Sirius, I would think that your family is pretentious enough that you’d know about that.”

“Look, Pete, they’re typically made from _threads_ of wool, cotton, or linen, which guess what? Regular yarn is _also_ made from these materials! Also, you have to be trying to be impressive when you’re actually not to be pretentious, we aren’t pretentious, we’re just rich.”

Peter looks at Sirius in incredulity. “Are you even fucking real? Who talks like that?”

“You should’ve seen the way he got Bratum to give him _mentorship_ , he sounded like he was at a fancy pureblood party, it was wild,” James interjects. “Anyway, back to my _story_.”

“What else is there to tell? Just show us the folder.”

“You know, Remus, I would think that you of all people would be supportive of my successful ability to get in and out of the office unnoticed, and to relock the drawer using magic so that it’ll take Bratum a while to figure out that I was in there. Yet here you are, telling me to hurry up and get to the point. I thought that you’d appreciate my dramatic timing. I’m _getting_ there.”

Remus scowls. “I’d appreciate dramatic timing if there was literally any more story to tell, but there isn’t.”

Unbeknownst to James, Sirius is reaching into his bag and pulling out the folder without him noticing. “It’s labelled ‘Recruitment Notes’. Well, that’s not ominous.”

“Hey! That was supposed to be my reveal!”

Ignoring him, Remus peers at the folder in Sirius' hands. “Okay, well, it’s obviously not grades. I stand corrected.”

“Treasure that, James, he’ll never admit he was wrong about anything ever again,” Peter quips. Remus flicks him.

Remus pauses before opening the folder, the other three boys crowded over his lap where it’s sitting, seeming to notice the other people in the common room. “Do you think – we should maybe move this to a different location?”

“Once again, you’ve proven yourself the brains of the operation. What would we do without you?” James asks, grabbing his bag.

“You’d be dead already,” Remus deadpans.

“We shouldn’t talk about this inside,” Peter says after a beat, frowning. “I mean, I’m sure the dorm is fine, but just to be safe.”

“How are we supposed to get out? We’re first years, it’s not like the prefects on night duty will just let us wander the halls. Plus, there’s Filch to think about,” Sirius adds, tugging a hand through his too-long hair.

“I think… I think I have something that might help,” James says slowly, remembering the folded up, very large piece of fabric sitting at the bottom of his trunk, with a note pinned to it in his father’s neat handwriting, reading _To James, for emergencies. And for a little bit of fun. Love, Dad_.

He thinks that this counts as both of those circumstances and runs upstairs to grab the Cloak.


	13. in which james has astigmatism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow i really am on top of the uploading rn ,,, this is not solely due to my own motivation unfortunately. anyway drop those comments and kudos if you would like to, i would certainly appreciate it!! thank you for the support <3
> 
> twitter - gryffsirius  
> instagram - emmakmarie  
> tumblr - siriusorioff  
> ko-fi - gryffsirius

“Remind me again, why did you just let this _extremely_ valuable piece of clothing sit at the bottom of your trunk for the past few months without indicating that you had anything even slightly similar in your possession?” Sirius asks incredulously as the four of them shuffle outside the castle, huddled together under James’ Invisibility Cloak.

When James had brought it down from the dorm, Sirius hadn’t thought it was anything of significance at first, just a shimmery pile of fabric that James had attached to an ill-conceived plan to sneak them out into the halls after curfew, but once he’d dramatically thrown it over Peter’s head and Peter had _disappeared_ , Sirius' interest had been considerably more piqued.

“I don’t have an excuse,” James says, squinting ahead in the dark, struggling to see beyond the thick material of the Cloak. They’d tried to light their wands to help them see a little bit better, but the magic of the Cloak ended up blocking the light from escaping from beyond it, so it didn’t really help at all. “Honestly, I just forgot I even had it.”

“How could you _forget_ ,” Peter begins, then stops mid-step as James, leading the group, stumbles over a badly-placed stone in the hall. “You good?”

“When is he ever,” Remus says, and James glares at him over his shoulder. “You know, maybe you should stop squinting in the dark like this, James, maybe that’s why you have to wear glasses.”

“You arsehole, it’s _genetic_! I have astigmatism!”

They continue bickering under their breaths as they make their way outside, far enough from the castle that no one will think to look for them, eventually stopping under the tree by the lake. James throws the Cloak on the ground as a sort of picnic blanket, and all four of them light their wands, arranging them so that they’re pointed together and form a sort of single, central light. It’s a warm, campfire-like glow that rises from the ground, and the boys sit cross-legged in a circle around it as James produces the thick folder from Bratum’s desk.

James stares at it for a minute without doing anything, so rather than wait for a preamble that seems to be a long time coming, Sirius reaches over and pulls it out of James’ grasp, flipping it open and laying it on the Cloak so that they can all see the contents.

“Do you expect me to fucking read upside-down?” Peter grumbles but cranes his head around to solve his own problem instead of complaining further.

There’s a list on the front page, like James had described, full of names with various circles and underlines. Sirius hastily scans it, looking for anything familiar.

“Look, there’s you,” Remus says, pointing to the bottom third of the list where there’s a hastily scrawled _Sirius Black_ , marked with a star to the right and three question marks. “It would’ve been handier if he’d left us a key so we could decipher the meanings of these symbols, but I suppose we can figure it out with a bit of work.”

“Yeah, sure, but who has time for that?” James says recklessly, turning the pages to a random spot in the middle and tapping the new page impatiently. “Let’s look at this instead.”

As if they’d planned it, the four of them lean in closer to peer at Bratum’s scribbles, realizing at the same time what exactly it is that they’re looking at.

“Is this…” Peter says, then stops and seems to revise his sentence structure. “Does that parchment have a far too detailed log of Dumbledore’s movements, or am I reading that wrong?”

“How would he even know this, I didn’t think regular teachers were exactly kept in the loop of Dumbledore’s daily comings and goings, and this has shit like _meeting with the Minister_ with notes about what the conversation was about,” Remus adds, running a finger along the page. “Does he have a listening device in Dumbledore’s office?”

“A what?”

“A listening device, you know, like a microphone or something to record the conversations.” In response to James’ continued blank look, Remus sighs and elaborates, “Just something that makes it so he doesn’t have to be there to hear what’s going on. I know most Muggle technology goes haywire around magic, but he could have charmed it to work or something, or found a magical object that would do the same thing. Either way, there’s no other way he would get all this information.”

“Gross, there’s entries every day about how long Dumbledore spends in the bathroom,” Sirius says, making a face as he reads that section. “I didn’t need to know that.”

Remus starts to turn the pages and leaf through the rest of the folder, the other boys making notes and comments on their own parchment about what they’ve found. By the time they’ve read – or attempted to read, Sirius can barely figure out a single word due to Bratum’s abysmal penmanship – through the entire folder, the list that Peter’s titled _Potential Criminal Actions by Supreme Cunt/Possible Death Eater/Professor Adam Bratum_ features things like _spy, watches Dumbledore pee, was at Sirius' house, strange list of students? I got nothing concrete_ , and they’re feeling a bit more disappointed than any of them were really expecting.

“Are you sure this was the only thing you could’ve gotten from the drawer?” Remus asks James, leaning back against the tree with a disgruntled expression furrowing his brow.

“Yes, it’s like I told you, this was the only thing in the drawer aside from some junk that I’m positive didn’t mean anything.”

“Maybe he just isn’t a Death Eater,” Peter muses.

“Then what the fuck was he doing trying to get my dad to join You-Know-Who? I don’t think people who aren’t already on his side just decide to promote him for the hell of it.”

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” James complains loudly, reaching out and shaking the folder in frustration. “Why can’t he just give us the –”

As James lifts the folder and gives it a particularly hard jerk, a curl of blue parchment unfolds from somewhere in the depths and falls to the ground, the other end still attached to the inside of the folder itself.

“– answers?” James finishes, sounding bewildered.

Sirius reaches out and picks up the blue parchment. It’s about the width of a roll of toilet paper but is definitely just a smaller sized scroll of parchment than the standard. He tugs it a little, causing more of it to tumble out onto the ground.

Remus says what they’re all thinking. “Where the fuck did that come from?”

Wordlessly, James lays the folder out on the Cloak, shoving their wands a little to the side so that he has a flat surface to use. Sirius gathers the blue parchment scroll up in his hands and traces it back to the source, finding it trailing out of a tiny slit in one side of the folder.

“How did it fit in there, this is clearly far more parchment than should be able to be stored inside that hole, and it just keeps coming,” Peter says, trying to read Bratum’s script.

“Undetectable Extension Charm, probably,” Sirius replies absently, immediately aware in the moment after he says that that his friends are slightly bewildered by his sudden and intelligent response. “What? My mum uses those a lot on her purses.”

“Is that why she always has those tiny little bags? In all the pictures that I’ve seen?”

“Yeah, that’s why.”

“How many pictures have you seen of Sirius' mum?”

James waves off the question. “That’s besides the point. Pull out the parchment, this is finally getting interesting.”

Peter makes a note of _weird blue parchment_ on his list of incriminating evidence. Sirius keeps pulling at it until the eventual length of the parchment is over four feet and it finally completely pops out of the little hole in the folder. “Where’s the top?” Sirius asks. Remus snorts. “What?”

“Nothing. It’s by James’ foot.”

James picks it up, seeing as it’s nearest to his own appendage, holding his lit wand closer to the top so that he can read the title. “ _Notable students: consider for recruitment_ ,” he reads, frowning. “It’s names and has like, paragraphs about their skills.”

“Oh, wow,” Sirius asks, trying to sound nonchalant, even though his head is spinning. “Anyone we know?”

“Uh, yeah, you’re on here, mate.”

“Oh.”

“Yikes,” says Peter, hissing a little as though this new information has hurt him a little. “I mean, we knew this was likely, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Sirius replies. He doesn’t really listen much as James reads the entire list out loud, too distracted by the growing sense of dread in his gut. Sirius isn’t surprised. He _shouldn’t_ be surprised. Bratum was at his house over Christmas, he comes from a prominent pureblood family, and that seems to be the audience that You-Know-Who is catering to. The knowledge that Sirius, as the heir to the Black family, is expected to make an impression and follow in his family’s footsteps. He’s already deviated a bit just by being in Gryffindor, and he’s sure that his parents would like him to correct that mistake. His mother has said as much in her letters, but Sirius also isn’t sure that they’d want him to go so far as to join with someone as extreme as You-Know-Who. Sirius doesn’t know much about politics, he’s twelve, but he does know that You-Know-Who isn’t a good person.

He doesn’t want to think about whether their mild support for the issues that You-Know-Who campaigns for make his parents bad people. All he knows is that Bratum, at the very least, is someone who shouldn’t be at a school anymore.

“What the fuck,” Remus says under his breath as James finishes reading the parchment. “This is… some cult shit.”

“What do we do with this?”

“Did we not already decide that we have to tell Dumbledore? He’s the only one who can force Bratum out, and this shit is, at the very least, creepy as hell.”

“Why would he listen to us?” Sirius says softly, flicking the end of his shoelace between his fingers. “We aren’t important.”

“Well, he _should_ listen,” James replies stoutly, gathering the parchment scroll and the various sheets back into the folder and standing. “We’re smart, we’re investigative, and we have good intentions. If he doesn’t listen to us, then he’s an idiot.”

“I’m not sure you can get away with calling Dumbledore an idiot when you’re literally a first year,” Remus says.

James shrugs in a gesture of mock defense. “I said what I said, Dumbledore will just have to deal with that.”

It’s a nearly moonless night in February, and even though it was already a chilly winter evening when they left the dorm, the air feels significantly colder now to Sirius, after their discoveries under the tree. A particularly sharp breeze cuts through them as they squeeze under James’ Cloak, and they hurry back to the castle, grateful that they hadn’t been caught, but more preoccupied with what to do about this new situation than anything else.

They hide the folder under a loose floorboard next to Peter’s trunk and spend the rest of the night sitting around the fire, jittery over their discoveries and just trying to kill time until morning, all four of them too nervous to sleep.

James makes a cheesy remark about how they might be about to go up against a teacher, but at least they have each other to count on, and Remus throws a shoe at him.


	14. in which bratum gets tripped

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nearing the end of year 1!!! thank u for all the support ,,, year 2 is coming v v soon after year 1 finished :))) i love u all

Peter isn’t sure why they seem to have collectively decided to put off telling anyone what’s happening with Bratum, but it’s several weeks before anything else happens.

Remus had said something about needing to wait for more evidence, but Peter thinks that excuse is a bit of a reach, considering the documents that they’d found in Bratum’s office, written in his own hand. However, despite his reservations, here they are. Waiting. And of course, nothing’s happened.

February and early March had passed without much incident other than Remus' monthly visit home and then his birthday on the tenth. They’d had a small celebration, just like what they’d done for Sirius, wherein they’d baked a cake and sat around and ate it instead of going to dinner. James has been hinting at his own birthday rapidly approaching on the twenty-seventh, and unbeknownst to him, Peter has already been researching new recipes to try out for him. James doesn’t like chocolate, so making something interesting enough to encompass James’ personality and yet doesn’t include chocolate at all is a bit of a challenge for Peter at his current level of culinary skill.

That level is barely above nonexistent, but Peter’s made two cakes this school year so far, so he thinks he can consider himself at least a little proficient in that area.

“So,” Sirius says at breakfast in mid-March, leg bouncing impatiently under the table, knocking into Peter’s from his position to his right, “when are we talking to Dumbledore?”

“You know, he hasn’t _done_ anything,” Remus says. “Dumbledore isn’t going to believe us if we don’t have anything to back up our accusations. Like, what’s he going to do, take the papers as evidence? We could’ve forged that.”

“Okay, not all of us have that devious of a mentality, Remus. Besides, we don’t _know_ he hasn’t done something, he’s here and trying to get people to join a murder cult, isn’t that enough reason for us to want him out?”

“I don’t disagree with that, I’m just saying that we need to have the right approach, otherwise we’ll lose all credibility and they won’t believe us when we _do_ have something solid to report.”

Sirius looks a bit disgruntled by Remus' response, but seems to keep his thoughts to himself for the remainder of breakfast.

Most of the day passes without incident, the teachers reminding them in every class that exams were approaching (“They’re practically next year, what do we have to worry about?” James had said casually) and that they should begin their preparations now so that they’d have plenty of time to be ready.

“Maybe someone will do something heroic and get exams cancelled,” Peter groans as they leave Transfiguration with a pile of homework and more threats concerning the impending exams. “Maybe someone will die.”

“Are you prepared to make that ultimate sacrifice for us, Pete?” Sirius asks, walking backwards down the hall for some reason. Peter thinks it might be because Sirius is trying to maintain eye contact during the conversation but everyone he nearly runs into and doesn’t notice seems to think he’s just a massive inconvenience, judging from the dirty looks they’re throwing in his direction.

“Me dying would be a goddamn tragedy, and you know it. They’d have to cancel the exams and probably the entire next school year out of respect for me.”

“That’s exactly the point, I rest my case,” Sirius replies, raising his hands in a self-satisfied gesture, which would have come across as successfully purposely condescending had he not tripped over the hem of his robes and stumbled slightly, having to latch onto Remus' sleeve for balance.

“Maybe Sirius will die for us instead, and our entire problem will be solved,” James says.

The afternoon reveals itself to be a very nice one, weather-wise, and after their classes are finally over, the boys make their way outside to spend some quality time doing nothing. They’re just about to exit the castle and head out to find a slightly secluded part of the grounds – none of them particularly feel like speaking to anyone other than themselves today – when there’s a raspy clearing of a throat from behind them that stops Peter in his tracks.

He turns around to see Bratum looming behind them, a sinister smile with no hint of joviality behind it on his face. “Hello, boys,” Bratum says, and Peter isn’t sure if he’s imagining the creepy tone because he’s scared that Bratum knows that they know, or if he’s always sounded like that. “I was looking to have a word with Mr. Black and Mr. Potter.”

“Okay,” James says. “How many words would you like to have?”

“Shut up,” Remus snaps under his breath, but Bratum’s falsely polite demeanor has already faded, and his eyes narrow at James’ response.

“I’ll thank you not to take that tone of insolence with me, young man,” Bratum growls, and suddenly Peter feels a wave of fear. None of them have, for even an instant, taken Bratum seriously, not even after finding out that he’s actively working with You-Know-Who. There’s just been something about him that made Peter feel like it was all an act, as though none of the airs he’s been putting on have actually had any sort of relevance to his personality. But now, with his teeth bared and his smoothed back hair – Sirius had made a comment a few months ago about what a bold choice that was, considering Bratum’s receding hairline – coming slightly loose from its carefully combed style, Peter thinks he looks a little unhinged.

That worries him a little. Enough to make him edge closer to his friends, noticing that they’ve all done the same.

Sirius speaks up, a slight tremor in his voice that’s only noticeable to those who know him well enough, saying, “Sir, anything you want to say to James and me you can say in front of all of us.”

“Very well,” Bratum almost spits, before stopping himself and taking a breath as though to calm himself down. In the split second that his attention has been diverted, James makes a move as though to escape from the situation, grabbing onto Remus and Peter and tugging them exactly one step away before Bratum unsurprisingly notices the movement.

He latches onto James’ upper arm with a suddenly claw-like hand and James lets out an involuntary yelp, letting go of his friends and squeezing his eyes shut. “You know, you almost had me fooled the other day,” Bratum says, not speaking to any one of them in particular, but keeping his grip tight on James’ arm. James is avoiding looking at him, but meanwhile Peter can’t tear his gaze from Bratum’s hand. He’s scared that he’s going to leave a bruise.

“Wasn’t it a few weeks ago?” Remus says under his breath, then smacks his own hand over his mouth. Luckily, Bratum doesn’t seem to notice.

Bratum lets go of James and surveys the four of them, now standing kind of in two rows, James and Sirius in front of Remus and Peter. The hall they’re in is still deserted, though Peter thinks that he can faintly hear the sound of clicking footsteps approaching from a bit away.

Peter puts it together in his head. Clicking footsteps means heeled shoes. Heeled shoes means teacher. Teacher means someone to help them.

The footsteps sound far enough away that it’ll take the person a while to reach them, but close enough that Peter thinks they just have to stall Bratum for a bit. Maybe, if they’re lucky, they just need to manage a minute or so.

“I know you ransacked my office, Potter,” Bratum hisses, “and I know you had Black distract me in the hall so that you could do it. It’s taken me a while to be sure of it, but I know now. There’s no one else it could be, and I don’t know why you’d ever think that it was acceptable to invade a teacher’s privacy like that. _Especially_ after you’d already gotten caught attempting to do something like this before. This has serious consequences, young man.”

Peter reaches slightly behind him, into Remus' bag, and notes the distinctive feel of the thick blue parchment that Bratum had used to write his notes. Peter tries not to visibly react, but he’s relieved to know that they have the evidence with them. They’ll need that when whichever teacher it is comes close enough to see what’s going on. Upon removing his hand from Remus' bag, Peter tugs slightly on his friend’s sleeve to get his attention, keeping his motions slow and small enough that Bratum won’t notice.

Remus raises his eyebrows as though to ask _what_ , and Peter flicks his eyes and slightly tilts his head in the direction of the footsteps, which he’s estimated are heading towards the nearest corner, which is still on the other end of the hall. Remus nods a little, then edges forward and steps on the back of Sirius' shoe a little, making the motion look like he’s just tripped, whispering, “Teacher coming,” somewhere around Sirius' shoulder mid-step. “Sorry,” Remus says, more loudly, to cover his tracks.

Peter can’t see if Sirius understands what Remus is trying to get at, since he’s doing a phenomenal job of keeping an incredibly neutral expression. There’s a tense knot in his stomach, and he knows that there’s no way for them to get the message to James as well without being noticed.

Bratum is still spinning a nonsensical and furious yarn about how unacceptable James’ actions have been, hardly pausing for breath and gesticulating a lot. Peter’s thinking frantically about what to do next, his badly formed thoughts jumping around and coming to nothing. He’s just realizing that he might truly have nothing that’ll help the situation when Sirius shifts.

“Do you have any proof, sir?” Sirius asks suddenly, loudly, stopping Bratum mid-speech. James has been quiet and still since Bratum had grabbed his arm, but he looks up at that.

“What?” Bratum asks, sounding a bit taken aback.

“Proof. I assume that you have it, if you’re accusing James of the hefty crime of breaking into your office and me of being his accomplice. Sir.”

Bratum grinds his teeth. “I may not have tangible evidence, Black, but –”

“So, you don’t have anything,” Sirius interrupts. “Good to know. You know, sir, you can’t just go around blaming students for your office being, as you said, _ransacked_. Are you sure that it even was? Maybe you’re just disorganized.”

Peter can’t help himself, he laughs at that. It comes out a little high pitched and hysterical, escaping in a loud burst. Sirius grins at him over his shoulder.

They aren’t up against a wall or anything, Peter thinks, looking around as Bratum directs his white-hot furious glare at him for a moment before focusing on Sirius again, who seems to be purposely diverting all his attention.

Remus puts the pieces together faster than any of the others do, as the footsteps are nearing and Bratum’s eyes are fixed on Sirius. “James,” he says urgently, grabbing his friend’s wrist and pulling him back in a motion that sends James almost running down the hall in the opposite direction due to the momentum. Remus follows him automatically, and within a second, Peter and Sirius are doing the same, Bratum not registering that the four of them aren’t running away from him, but rather towards someone else.

“Come back here!” Bratum shouts, his voice echoing in the hall. Peter thinks he’s gone slightly mad with the way the situation has been antagonized. He seems to almost be foaming at the mouth as he races after them, all pretense of decorum forgotten.

They’re at the complete opposite of the hall than the end where the approaching teacher is supposed to come around, and frankly, all four of them have short legs, so Bratum is gaining on them alarmingly fast. That is, until Remus, who’d taken out his wand without any of them noticing, manages to aim it over his shoulder and wheeze, “ _Impedimenta_ ,” causing Bratum to fall spectacularly. “Good god,” Remus complains in his next breath, clutching at his chest, “I was not built to run.”

Peter can hear Bratum roaring curse words at them from his position on the floor, and he can only assume that he’s regaining his footing, but none of them stop running until they reach the corner, skidding slightly to unsuccessfully avoid crashing directly into none other than Professor McGonagall.


	15. in which mcgonagall pokes holes in the evidence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're nearing the end girls and gays!!! i actually am uploading two chapters today ,,, this one and the next one. this is the Second To Last Chapter Of Year One!!!! fingers crossed that it lives up to the hype :0
> 
> twitter - gryffsirius  
> instagram - emmakmarie  
> tumblr - siriusorioff

“We’re saved,” Sirius nearly shouts. “I thank the wizard gods every day for you, Professor.”

“Wizard gods?” Professor McGonagall splutters, looking down at the twelve-year-old with his arms dramatically thrown around her. “Pull yourself together, Mr. Black, what’s this about?”

James, who’d careened into the wall instead of successfully stopping, manages, “He’s gonna kill us, Professor!”

“Who? What’s going on?” Professor McGonagall extricates herself from Sirius' grasp and looking back down the hall to see Bratum picking himself up off of the floor. “Professor Bratum?”

“Yes, he’s a Death Eater –”

“He had a list in his desk –”

“– keeping track of students and Dumble – I mean, _Professor_ Dumbledore –”

“– wants to recruit Sirius –”

“I _told_ you we needed more information, this sounds so bad –”

“He came after us and we tripped him!” James finishes, making himself heard over the other boys’ babbling through sheer volume.

“You _tripped_ him?” Professor McGonagall exclaims, and Sirius frowns, disappointed at the fact that this was the point she chose to focus on. She strides away from them, towards Bratum, the boys nearly having to jog to keep up, calling, “Adam, are you alright?”

Bratum makes an indiscernible noise from the floor, and Professor McGonagall is momentarily distracted from his plight by the four adrenaline filled boys dancing around her, trying to get her attention.

“Alright, _stop_ ,” she commands, and they try to settle down a bit, but Sirius still feels his body fighting the urge to jump around and shout about the adventure of it all. “One of you, tell me exactly what happened, from the _beginning_.”

“I nominate Remus,” James says.

“Me? Why me?”

“You’ve been the least convinced the whole time, you’re the most objective,” Peter jumps in.

Remus rolls his eyes a little. “Fine,” he sighs, and runs through the whole story at breakneck speed, telling Professor McGonagall about the weird detentions and speeches, how Sirius had seen Bratum at his house over Christmas and the conversation he’d overheard (glossing over any mention of Sirius' father, which Sirius was grateful for, though the implications made him slightly uncomfortable), how James had decided to get himself consecutive detentions solely for espionage, the secret drawer, the folder with notes, the strange blue parchment, and finally, the encounter in the hallway culminating in Bratum’s position on the floor.

He’d regained his footing, slowly, and Sirius feels a little bad for him as he sees Bratum pulling himself up without any help. It looked as though when Remus had jinxed him, he’d had a particularly bad fall, judging from the way he’s wincing every time he has to put weight on his left ankle. The furrowing of his brows hasn’t relented, however, and Sirius is watching him closely rather than paying attention to what’s happening in the current conversation between the four of them and Professor McGonagall.

“So, let me get this straight,” Professor McGonagall says, taking off her glasses and pinching the bridge of her nose between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, “you decided that because Professor Bratum was having a conversation about politics at Mr. Black’s house that he was a prominent member of a murderous cult focused on blood purity, and that he’s been spying on the staff and students of this institution for nearly a year now.”

“Well, when you put it like that –” Sirius begins.

“There’s no other way to put it,” Professor McGonagall interrupts, steamrollering over the rest of Sirius' sentence. “These accusations are absolutely unfounded, and the actions the four of you have taken in response to your inflated hero fantasies are wildly disproportionate to the supposed crimes.”

“Inflated hero fantasies?” James asks under his breath. Peter elbows him.

“I understand that it’s your first time being away from home, and that you’re bound to go looking for adventure. I was a first year Gryffindor too,” Professor McGonagall continues, and Sirius is surprised at how the severe tonality of her voice seems to have lessened a little. “ _However_ , that does not condone attacking a teacher and completely undermining his authority both in the classroom and in his disciplinary measures.”

“No, that’s not what –” Sirius begins, but Professor McGonagall holds up her hand and he falls silent.

“I’ve heard enough to tell me that we need to bring this matter to Professor Dumbledore,” she says. Sirius sees a flicker of movement slightly behind Professor McGonagall; he feels a bizarre tingle in his stomach accompanied by the sudden need to _move_ , but he can’t figure out why.

It takes him a second, but as Professor McGonagall continues speaking, Sirius realizes that Bratum is no longer leaning against the wall, mustering the strength to stand up straight.

“Shit,” Sirius hisses, and the look Professor McGonagall gives him is full of fire.

“ _Excuse_ me, Mr. Black?” she demands, and Sirius grimaces.

“Sorry, Professor,” Sirius begins, looking around distractedly. “It’s just –”

Sirius scans the hallway for Bratum, but he’s gone.

“Where did he go?” Peter asks, as though he’s on the same wavelength as Sirius.

Professor McGonagall looks around and narrows her eyes at the sudden absence of her coworker. She doesn’t say anything for a moment but seems to come to a decision about the situation fairly quickly, flattening her lips into a thin line and nodding once before saying curtly, “Alright, boys, let’s go. Time to get this straightened out.”

With a sweeping motion of both arms, she gestures to the general direction of Dumbledore’s office, the boys proceeding to walk in front of her in a little knot as though she doesn’t want any of them accidentally escaping. Not that at this point, Sirius thinks, any of them particularly want to. They were right about Bratum, weren’t they? So they _need_ to talk to Dumbledore anyway, right?

Sirius is starting to have doubts about the credibility of their evidence against their Defense Against the Dark Arts professor as they make their way through the halls, but the one shred of proof that he’s still holding onto is the fact that Bratum has conveniently disappeared at this moment. One would think, if he’s innocent, that he would be wanting to stay as close to the situation as possible so that he could make sure the boys were properly punished for… Sirius supposes that this could go as far as being called _attacking a teacher_ , even though all they did was trip him and be rude. Yet somehow, for some reason, he’s decided to disappear.

“Are we in trouble?” James decides to ask Professor McGonagall, for some reason.

“I would say so,” Professor McGonagall replies, but she doesn’t sound as angry as she did when the initial confrontation was happening. “It would be helpful for Professor Bratum to stay around and tell Professor Dumbledore what happened from his perspective, but he seems to have taken the liberty of leaving the area.”

“I wonder why that is,” Remus mutters, in the kind of tone that tells Sirius that they’ve been coming to the same conclusions.

Instead of reprimanding Remus for the implications of his statement – there’s no way Professor McGonagall doesn’t know exactly what Remus had meant by his sarcasm – she replies, “I suppose we’ll find out, Mr. Lupin.”

They reach Dumbledore’s office rather quickly, Professor McGonagall guiding them through the halls at a speed that almost has Sirius jogging. He doesn’t think that’s the most considerate of her; all four of them have pretty short legs. However, if they’re going to be expelled for tripping a teacher, Sirius concedes, it’s unlikely that Professor McGonagall cares that much about making them jog. Whatever the motivation, Sirius is slightly out of breath by the time they reach the spiral stairs heading up to Dumbledore’s office.

“Ice Mice,” Professor McGonagall sharply tells the stone gargoyle, who leaps aside to let the five of them ascend the staircase.

“I like Ice Mice,” James announces unnecessarily as the staircase turns and brings them upwards.

“This is like a spiral escalator,” Remus says, a hand trailing along the stone wall as they ascend.

“What’s an escalator?”

“Oh, I forgot, you’re from the Middle Ages.”

“How is it medieval not to know what a – what was it? Excavator? I don’t know what that is.”

“They’re two different _things_ , Sirius, an escalator is a moving mechanical staircase that you don’t have to walk up, and an excavator is someone who _digs_.”

“Well _excuse_ me for not knowing about your Muggle technology and all the fancy moving staircases and digging people you have in Wales –” Sirius is cut off as the stairs stop moving and Professor McGonagall clears her throat.

Sirius is surprised that she didn’t interrupt his and Remus' bickering earlier, but her anger with the four of them seems to be decreasing the longer that Bratum is mysteriously absent, so Sirius supposes it makes a bit of sense.

Dumbledore’s office looks exactly the same as it had when Sirius had a meeting with the headmaster all those months ago, so he doesn’t take much interest in the baubles and trinkets and intricate machinery that Dumbledore has scattered around the room. His friends, on the other hand, are taking in the spacious library of an office in awe, fascinated by the décor and trying their best not to make eye contact with the portraits on the walls.

“Wait here,” Professor McGonagall commands once they reach the space in front of the desk, and the boys stand in a tiny cluster as she ascends another staircase, presumably to ask Dumbledore to emerge from his private apartments.

“I want to touch that thing on his desk,” Peter whispers.

“Do it,” Remus replies in the same tone. “Do it, I dare you.”

“Which thing? There’s like, a million of them.”

“Which thing do you _think_ , James, the _cool_ one.”

James, looking bewildered but as though he doesn’t want to be left out of the conversation, replies after a beat, “Touch all of them.”

“You idiot, he’ll get caught,” Sirius says, contributing finally.

“Speaking of being caught,” comes a booming voice from the top of the stairs, “it seems as though you boys have some explaining to do.”


	16. in which summer begins and the school year ends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, kids. here we are. this is the last chapter of year one. this has been one of the biggest challenges of my writing career, and i'm so grateful that i took on this opportunity to create a more detailed look at the marauders era. we started the series with remus' pov, and that's how we're going to end this year.
> 
> i want to thank the love of my life, jamie, for supporting me through this whole process and motivating me to write even when i didn't want to (tactics such as coercion, phone confiscation, and incentives were used. they were all effective) and for always encouraging me when i put something out, never holding the long stretches between chapters over me. you have been my inspiration and my rock since i started this, and i look forward to you seeing when i finish it.
> 
> secondary shoutout goes to the jarauders, who hype me up constantly. i can't write a paragraph about each of them right now, because people don't want to read that in the notes of a fic, but just know. i love each and every single one of you. i would not be able to do this without you. 
> 
> the third and final thank you goes to everyone who has read this, who has commented and left kudos and bookmarked and told me wonderful things that made me want to keep writing. i am one hundred percent planning on continuing this fic verse, and i hope you'll stick with me through that journey. i could not have done this without you, and i love every single one of you. thank you, thank you, thank you.
> 
> i just want to remind everyone that THIS IS NOT THE END. i will be writing more in this fic verse and continuing through the rest of the hogwarts years, all the way to 1981. stay tuned for more!!
> 
> without further ado, here is the last chapter of 'and how mighty it can be'. please enjoy.

Looking back on it, Remus thinks that the way things worked out during his first year away from home was _stunningly_ anticlimactic.

Dumbledore listened to everything they had to say with a solemn expression, steepled fingers, and no interruptions. He looked at their minimal evidence and told them that he would consider it and let them know what he found, but that they weren’t in trouble as of right now. They had left his office feeling apprehensive and unfulfilled and didn’t hear anything for about three days.

That was when, in his scouring of the castle in an attempt to divine where exactly Bratum had vanished to – Dumbledore had managed to confirm that he hadn’t left the grounds – Filch had come across Bratum hiding in a room off of a seventh floor corridor, where he’d apparently been stashing all of his espionage devices and notes on the various occupants of Hogwarts. Bratum had been caught in the act of writing a letter detailing the events that had just unfolded, that his position had been compromised, and that he wasn’t sure he would be able to stick out the rest of the school year. It had been addressed, rather incriminatingly, to _My Lord_ , and Filch had proceeded to whack Bratum with a broom hard enough to knock him out, confiscate his wand while he was incapacitated, and drag him out of the room to Dumbledore’s office by his ankles.

“I’m kind of disappointed that we never had a big fight with Bratum or anything,” James says one afternoon just before the end of the school year. Summer has set in in nearly full force, and the air is hot and thick. The four of them are taking advantage of a shady spot and a slight breeze, sitting underneath a large tree by the lake and relishing the fact that they’ve managed to make it through their exams.

“Why the fuck would you be disappointed?” Peter asks, lying in the grass, head pointed away from the rest of them. The bottoms of his feet are flat against the bottoms of Sirius', who’s sitting with his back against the tree; every now and then the two of them will move their feet together from side to side with their heels still resting on the ground. “He’s a grown man, he could have killed us if he wanted to. Especially now that we know we were _right_.”

“We didn’t even get any House points for that,” Sirius murmurs absentmindedly, his head tilted back and his eyes closed, slightly-too-long hair ruffling in the breeze.

“Sirius, we’re lucky we didn’t _lose_ any House points for that,” Remus replies, frowning slightly and picking at the grass by his knee. “I was the one who jinxed Bratum, they could’ve thrown me out for that.”

“They wouldn’t have thrown you out, you’re too smart for that. What would they do without you? The whole school would fall apart if you were gone.”

“That’s nice, but wildly inaccurate.”

Remus had felt like a bit of a disappointment when they’d been brought into Dumbledore’s office. Even making eye contact with the headmaster had made him squirm with guilt; after all the effort Dumbledore had gone through to make sure that Remus was able to go to Hogwarts and be a normal wizarding kid, this was how Remus had decided to repay him? By jinxing a member of his staff and accusing them of being an active member of a blood supremacy cult?

He’s just grateful that it worked out. The last they’d heard, Bratum is in a cell in Azkaban, awaiting trial. If he’s found guilty, it’s likely that he’ll just go directly back there, which is a relief. However, it means that for the remainder of the school year, their Defense Against the Dark Arts classes have been covered by assorted teachers with free periods and have mostly been reading the textbooks and learning random spells that are probably above the skill level of first years. Every teacher has a different method of being a substitute in Defense Against the Dark Arts: Flitwick tends to let them use it as a study hall or to ask questions about Charms, McGonagall steadily works through the curriculum with them as best as she can and teaches them actual spells as they come across them (which isn’t much, considering they’re still mostly learning magical theory at this point), and Sprout showed them how to conjure a Patronus, but _you’ll learn that once you get to your N.E.W.T.s_.

At this point of the year, however, they’re done with classes. And school in general, actually. Their exams concluded a week ago, and because of the way exams are structured at Hogwarts, with seven years of students needing to take exams all around the same time, the first and second years test together in the Great Hall, finishing before the rest of the students and then just having about two weeks of free time while the rest of the school work on theirs. Since the Hogwarts Express only leaves Hogsmeade once, they have some time to do nothing before it’s time to pack up and head home for the summer.

If Remus had gone home for Easter, he thinks it would be less nerve-wracking to be seeing his parents imminently. Peter had stayed at school with him over Easter as well, but James and Sirius had both gone home, returning with grimaces over the earfuls they’d gotten from their parents about the _irresponsibility_ and the _disrespect_ and the _sheer recklessness_ of their involvement with Bratum’s sacking and arrest. They’d all gotten letters sent home immediately after the situation had concluded, and mercifully, none of them had received a Howler, though Sirius had gotten a very concise, very clipped letter from his mother saying that _your father and I will be having a stern discussion with you when you come home_.

It hadn’t seemed to have gone that badly, considering that Sirius had said it was fine now, but Remus had been able to tell that he’d been nervous about it. Remus supposes that it’s the same way he’s feeling about going home now. His parents have never been big shouters, Remus has always figured that this is because they understand that he’s got a shit load going on in his life already, not to mention that he’s always been a generally good kid. But the guilt of being so flippant about his very special and precarious place at Hogwarts is eating Remus alive, and he’s certain that this’ll come up in conversation with them.

As if he knows what Remus is thinking, Sirius asks, “Are you worried about going home?”

“No. I don’t know. Not really.” He pauses. “Okay, yes. A little bit.”

“If they’re angry, don’t worry, mate, you can always come to mine,” James offers, throwing a half-torn up leaf at Remus. It lands in his lap and Remus picks it up, twirling it between his fingers by the stem.

“They won’t be too mad, they know we were trying to do the right thing. They’re just…” Remus stops. He doesn’t know how to properly express that Hope and Lyall Lupin have received the news that their only son, who has suffered from lycanthropy from age four and who they thought they would have to protect and worry over for his entire life and who they have _just_ sent away to school for the first time, has put himself physically in danger to catch a Death Eater who had been his teacher for several months, as well as threatening his position at the school due to his recklessness in how he went about it. “…a bit overprotective,” he finishes.

“They seemed cool to me,” Peter says from the ground. He points his toes, pushing Sirius' backwards. “Does that hurt?”

“No, not really, it kind of stretches out my legs. Okay, ow, now it hurts, not so hard, Pete.”

“They _are_ , in general. They’re not like, overbearing or anything. They’d never ask me to switch Houses.”

“Gee, thanks, way to be subtle with the callout, Remus.”

“Look, it was an example, you know what I meant by that. Anyway, I think they just want to make sure I’m not putting myself in danger, which is something they didn’t think would happen here anyway. My mum was going to homeschool me, they were that worried about something happening.”

“Mine were upset because of that, too,” James says. “But they’ve always wanted me to come here, I can’t imagine being homeschooled.”

“I don’t think your parents could handle being around you 24/7, James.”

“I’m too much to be contained, Pete.”

There’s a brief pause, then Sirius says, “I’m glad they decided to let you come to school with us. It wouldn’t be the same without you.”

“You wouldn’t even know the difference, you wouldn’t know me.”

“Well, I’m glad I _do_ , just take the compliment, Remus.”

The four of them sit and watch the sun go down over the mountains, slowly, the afternoon breeze tying them together in a solidarity that doesn’t need words, and for maybe one of the first times in his life, Remus lets himself dream about the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> twitter - gryffsirius  
> instagram - emmakmarie  
> tumblr - siriusorioff


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